Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer said Tuesday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has become a "dead man walking," but added that President Donald Trump will only hurt his presidency when he gets rid of the embattled head of the Justice Department.
"Look, I think the bottom line is that he wants him to resign," Krauthammer told Fox News' Martha MacCallum. "On Friday, I said that Sessions was a 'wounded man walking,' last night on 'Special Report,' I said he was a 'dangerously wounded man walking.' Tonight, he's a dead man walking.
"There is no way that a president can humiliate a Cabinet member — a strong supporter from the beginning — in the way that Trump has done, just piling it on and expect that this relationship is going to last," he said.
"He'll either be fired, or I mean, it could be that he's decided that he's gonna dig in his heels on some kind of resistance — he'll stay in office no matter what," he continued. "But this cannot last."
"So he's gonna be gone. And I think ... the danger to Trump is that Sessions represents the policy side, the philosophical side, the conservative side of what Trump represented," Krauthammer explained, "and he held a lot of that coalition, brought that to Trump. And by getting rid of Sessions, he's alienating many conservatives as you indicated before. There are some who are already complaining, and that could be dangerous for Trump because what sustains him is the power and the loyalty of his base."
"You know when you look at President Trump," MacCallum said, "it appears that who he really wants to get rid of is [special counsel] Robert Mueller, and sort of in the chain of people who lead to Mueller, and he blames Sessions for stepping aside and provoking that in the first place and certainly [former FBI Director James] Comey as well."
"If that's the grand strategy," Krauthammer replied, "this is about as clumsy a way, a self-destructive a way of executing that strategy as imaginable. And I think we will see that play out."
Krauthammer said that Sessions cannot continue in a position where the president is humiliating him on a daily basis. He also explained that Sessions' career is over after leaving the attorney general position because he left the Senate at an age where he cannot go back to it.
Fox News' Tucker Carlson also warned President Trump on his show Tuesday that he was assailing one of his earliest and strongest supporters in Sessions.
