Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said people don’t expect “purity” on the part of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, but instead “somebody strong enough to take on Washington.”
Partial transcript as follows:
KARL: Let’s get more with Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a long-time member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump and is now chairman of his foreign policy team. Senator Sessions, let me pick it up right where we left off with Chairman Priebus. He talked about this article in “The New York Times,” about Trump’s relationship with women and said there are things in here that he is going to have to answer for. Do you agree with that?
SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALA.: Well, of course, he has to answer and people will ask those questions and they’ve got 20 or — they’ve got hundreds, I suppose. People digging in to everything he’s done for all these years. But people have not expected purity on his part. What they’re concerned about, they’re deeply concerned about is this: somebody strong enough to take on Washington. Will he challenge the establishment? Will he end the illegality in immigration? Will he insist on trade agreements that lift our economy, increase manufacturing? And will he stand up to the elites? And he’s doing so and the people are responding. He’s leading in Ohio by 4 points, a state we’ve lost for several terms now, elections now. Pennsylvania, neck-and-neck; Indiana. So these situations to me suggest that he’s appealing to the new group of voters, bringing in voters Republicans haven’t had in eight years, the ones necessary to win an election.
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