FLORENCE, Alabama — Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions finds himself in a fight for the U.S. Senate seat he occupied for two decades before accepting a position in President Donald Trump’s administration in early 2017.
Sessions is the front-runner in a race for the Republican Party’s nod that also features Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-AL), former Auburn University head football coach Tommy Tuberville, former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and State Rep. Arnold Mooney (R).
On Saturday, during a swing through the northern part of Alabama, Sessions made a campaign stop in the region of the state known as the Shoals, near the banks of the Tennessee River.
Before a crowd assembled at the Stricklin Hotel in downtown Florence, Sessions explained how the American people were concerned with the rise of socialism, a trend that is led by the success of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
“People are concerned about the future of the country, the trends that they are seeing out there,” Sessions said. “They’re worrying about this post-modernism, where everything is relative, and people don’t believe in truth anymore. They’re worried about that. They’re worried about this socialist trend in Democratic Party that is so diametrically opposed to the heritage that we as Americans have and the progress we’ve made for the last centuries. It’s just a stunning thing that we would have — it’s so surprising that Chris Matthews yesterday hammered Bernie Sanders for being a socialist. You know, it’s about time — he’s an ‘Independent Socialist.’ That’s what he puts on the ticket when he runs for office. He’s been winning as an independent socialist.”
Sessions recounted his run-ins with Sanders while the ranking member of the U.S. Senate’s Budget Committee.
“I debated him repeatedly on the Budget Committee, and we’d go at it — it got to be almost a joke,” he continued. “But I wouldn’t take any crap off of him, pardon me. He would say these things, and I would push back. One of the things he would say is, he would complain about how people weren’t doing well. This was like in the sixth year of the Obama administration. I would say, ‘It’s your administration running the government. What’s the matter? What do you want to do?’ Well, I know what he wanted to do — tax more, regulate more, pass out more welfare. That’s the way he thinks we should fix America.”
The Alabama Republican said if the country remained true to founding principles, which he said Trump has, then economic prosperity would continue.
“I believe if we follow great free-market principles and unleash the American economy and do it in a way that enhances the livelihood of not just the billionaires but working Americans — we follow our own principles, we could do better,” he added. “Well, President Trump has got in there, he’s cut taxes, he’s cut regulations, he’s supported American energy production.”
Sessions also reiterated the importance of the three main staples of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign: trade, immigration and foreign policy.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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