Breitbart turns on Donald Trump with attack on President’s treatment of Jeff Sessions

The president is 'weak', the alt-right publication said, and could be about to disappoint his keenest supporters in two important ways

TOPSHOT - People protest the appointment of white nationalist alt-right media mogul, former Breitbart News head Steve Bannon, to be chief strategist of the White House by President-elect Donald Trump on November 16 (AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump is showing he is "weak" by attacking the attorney general, according to Breitbart.

The alt-right publication has traditionally been one of the president's most prominent and important supporters. But it launched a scathing criticism upon Mr Trump in a news article published after he attacked Jeff Sessions.

The president could be failing to deliver on the wall and the immigration and other policies that were key to his election, the publication said, in an apparent attempt to distance itself from him.

In an early morning tweetstorm, Mr Trump had written: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!" The tweet was widely seen as a significant attempt by Mr Trump to distance himself from Mr Sessions and encourage the Department of Justice to prosecute Hillary Clinton.

Those attacks have lasted days and apparently came because Mr Sessions had recused himself from the investigation into Mr Trump's ties to Russia.

But Breitbart reporter Adam Shaw wrote in a news article that the tweets had only served to "only serves to highlight Trump’s own hypocrisy on the issue — and is likely to fuel concerns from his base who see Sessions at the best hope to fulfill Trump’s immigration policies".

Mr Shaw also wrote that it was the president's fault – not that of Jeff Sessions – that Ms Clinton hadn't been prosecuted.

It isn't the first time that Breitbart has attacked the president for failing to keep his campaign promise to lock up Ms Clinton. But it said that Mr Trump's base was now being sold out on two fronts and was becoming disappointed with the president.

Throughout the presidential campaign, Mr Trump said that if he were in power he would send Ms Clinton to prison. He also led supporters in chants of "lock her up", in response to perceived wrongdoing in handling her emails.

But soon after he was elected, Mr Trump told the New York Times that he felt sorry for Ms Clinton and wouldn't be having her locked up, despite his promises.

“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” Trump said in the interview. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways, and I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious.”

Mr Shaw wrote that many supporters looked past that U-turn because they believed that he would still pursue policies like the building of a wall and the banning of people from Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. But now Mr Trump is attacking Mr Sessions, that may be dropped too.

Mr Sessions has been one of the most vocal supporters of Mr Trump's extreme immigration policies, and losing him may delay plans to push them through the courts. Breitbart is also worried that he could be replaced by ex-New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has voiced support for undocumented migrants in the past.