On Tuesday, President Trump tweeted his anger at U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, saying, in reference to the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Muller: “If we had a real Attorney General, this Witch Hunt would never have been started. Looking at the wrong people.”

This isn’t the first time that Trump has expressed his anger with Sessions, who recused himself from the investigation into the Russian interference in the 2016 election. Indeed, the president said previously that had he known that Sessions would recuse himself, he would have “put a different attorney general in.”

In an interview with the New York Times in 2017, Trump took personal issue with Sessions’ decision saying that recusing himself “was very unfair to the president.”

The problem with all of this is that Trump doesn’t seem to understand the role of the U.S. attorney general. The AG is not the president’s lawyer but the country’s. That means that the attorney general does not defend the president but, instead, represents the country in legal matters.

This seems to be a distinction that is lost on the president who first sought to prevent Sessions from recusing himself and, after he did, has endlessly berated Sessions for not properly showing loyalty.

To be clear, Sessions had good reason to recuse himself, and he was right to do so. He faced a flood of criticism, including concerns from Republican leadership, over his own previously undisclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the Trump campaign. Since then, Sessions has defended his decision, citing regulations from the Department of Justice, which is led by the attorney general, that forbid DOJ officials from investigating campaigns they worked on.

Although there is plenty to disagree with Jeff Sessions on, on this matter he is correct and President Trump would do well to remember why.

If Trump is right that his campaign did nothing wrong, then the last thing the president would want is the findings of the investigation to be tainted and thus viewed as illegitimate. Given Sessions' own involvement with the Trump campaign and his contacts with Russia, he could not credibly exonerate the president.