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Trump Says He Might Overrule Jeff Sessions and Institute Prison Reforms

Trump Says He Might Overrule Jeff Sessions and Institute Prison Reforms

Football legend Jim Brown and rapper Kanye West will soon meet Pres. Trump at the White House for lunch, and according to the president, they’ll discuss justice reforms.

Trump was a guest on Fox & Friends this morning, and was asked about mass incarceration and instituting prison reforms. Activists frequently point to numbers that show that people of color are disproportionately imprisoned in America, and point to the need to reform drug laws and sentencing guidelines.

When asked about prison reform, Trump pointed to the case of Alice Johnson, a 63-year-old great-grandmother who was serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense. After Kim Kardashian, who is married to West, met with the president about the case, he granted her clemency. He said, “We do need reform … There has to be a reform, because it’s very unfair right now. It’s very unfair to African-Americans. It’s very unfair to everybody. It’s also very costly.”

There’s a wrinkle there. Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is a long-standing proponent for harsher laws and sentencing guidelines that hearken back to the War on Drugs era of policing. Just last year, Sessions raised eyebrows when he instructed prosecutors to “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.”

When asked to comment on Sessions’ zero tolerance views, Trump said, “If [Sessions] doesn’t [agree], then he gets overruled by me because I make the decision. He doesn’t.”

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