There is no consensus among the respondents to a new American Barometer poll on if President Trump should fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions, if Sessions should resign or if Sessions should stay on as leader of the Department of Justice.
The survey, conducted by Hill.TV and the HarrisX polling company, found that 40 percent of Americans said they were not sure what should happen with Sessions, while 21 percent said he should resign.
Eleven percent of respondents said Trump should fire Sessions, while 28 percent said he should continue to serve as the country’s top law enforcement official.
Trump has frequently launched public attacks on his own attorney general over the past year after Sessions recused himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including any ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
The president slammed Sessions during an interview with Hill.TV last week.
“I don’t have an attorney general. It’s very sad,” Trump said.
Political analyst Bill Schneider told Hill.TV’s Joe Concha that Trump’s attacks on Sessions demonstrate that he does not fully grasp what the role is meant to entail.
“My take is that the president of the United States doesn’t understand the job of the attorney general,” Schneider said on “What America’s Thinking.”
“The attorney general is not Trump’s wingman. He is not his primary lawyer. He’s the head of the Justice Department. He has a constitutional function. Trump believes that the attorney general should be there to protect the president. That’s just not true,” he continued.
The poll was conducted before it was revealed that Trump and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has presided over the Russia probe in Sessions’s place, would have a meeting on Thursday that could determine Rosenstein’s future with the department.
Trump has also publicly slammed Rosenstein in the past, as have many House Republicans, who accuse him of stymieing their probes into alleged anti-Trump bias at the Justice Department.
The New York Times reported on Friday that Rosenstein discussed wearing a wire to record the president as a plan to use the 25th Amendment to oust Trump from office. Rosenstein has denied the report, but it has cast doubt on his survival at the Justice Department.
The American Barometer poll was conducted Sept. 21–22 among 1,000 registered voters. The sampling margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
— Julia Manchester
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