In defeat, Sessions still says Trump right for the nation

(AP) — Jeff Sessions took the stage Tuesday night near the Alabama gulf coast with the same certitude he’d displayed on another, bigger stage across town almost five years ago. Donald Trump’s vision, the former attorney general declared anew, is right for America.

Yet this occasion couldn’t have been more different.

Neither Trump nor the boisterous throngs they’d greeted together at an August 2015 stadium rally were anywhere to be seen as Sessions calmly conceded defeat in Alabama’s Republican Senate runoff. The outcome ended Sessions’ hopes of returning to the Senate seat he abandoned to join Trump’s administration and instead left him to defend his honor one last time against the unlikely president he’d helped elect but then angered.

From the White House, Trump tweeted his joy over the stinging defeat of the former Justice Department chief he’s chastised since Sessions recused himself in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

“I leave elected office with my integrity intact,” Sessions said, initially standing alone before his grandsons joined him in front of reporters. “I hold my head high.”

For Trump, the outcome mixes vengeance and vindication. A turncoat, as he sees it, lost. And the president’s preferred candidate, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, won handily, immediately becoming a strong challenger to vulnerable Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in November.

Tuberville, not coincidentally, boasts a profile not unlike Trump, the former reality television star turned politician.

Tuberville, 65, has never held public office but comes to the political arena with a well-known brand. He embraces Trump and sells himself as an outsider, a conservative culture warrior. Jones, Tuberville told his supporters Tuesday, threatens Alabama with “New York values.” The president, a New York native, wrote Tuesday night on Twitter that Tuberville would be a “GREAT senator.”

Sessions, for his part, seemed eager to move on from a primary fight that saw Tuberville call him “weak” and a “disaster.” He pledged to help Tuberville defeat Jones in November, offering seemingly typical statements about party unity. But Sessions took special care when discussing the matter that dominated and ultimately doomed his comeback attempt.

“Let me say this about the president and our relationship. I leave with no regrets,” the 73-year-old Sessions said. “I was honored to serve the people of Alabama in the Senate, and I was extraordinarily proud of the accomplishments we had as attorney general.”