Republican Sen. Ben Sasse Benjamin (Ben) Eric SasseMcEnany says Trump will accept result of 'free and fair election' McConnell pushes back on Trump: 'There will be an orderly transition' Trump says he'll sign order aimed at protecting premature babies in appeal to religious voters MORE (Neb.) says he has warned President Trump Donald John TrumpSteele Dossier sub-source was subject of FBI counterintelligence probe Pelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed on' Trump 'no longer angry' at Romney because of Supreme Court stance MORE that firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsRoy Moore sues Alabama over COVID-19 restrictions GOP set to release controversial Biden report Trump's policies on refugees are as simple as ABCs MORE “would be a very, very, very bad idea.”

Sasse, speaking on the Senate floor, said that if Trump terminated Sessions, it would be because the attorney general has refused to execute “his job as a political hack.”

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“It’s been a strange couple of hours. Lots and lots of goofy talk about firing the attorney general,” Sasse said.

“I would just like to say in public what I’ve been saying to my colleagues in a message I just communicated to the president of the United States,” he continued.

“It would be a very, very, very bad idea to fire the attorney general because he’s not executing his job as a political hack. That is not the job of the attorney general.”

The GOP senator, a sometimes outspoken critic of Trump’s trade policies, defended Sessions, even while acknowledging that he doesn’t always agree with him.

“Everybody in this body knows that Jeff Sessions has been executing his job in a way faithful to his oath of office, to the Constitution, and trying to defend the rule of law,” Sasse said.

Sasse was one of several GOP lawmakers who defended Sessions on Thursday.

Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn John CornynQuinnipiac polls show Trump leading Biden in Texas, deadlocked race in Ohio The Hill's Campaign Report: GOP set to ask SCOTUS to limit mail-in voting Liberal super PAC launches ads targeting vulnerable GOP senators over SCOTUS fight MORE (Texas) told reporters earlier in the day that “those of us who’ve worked with Jeff Sessions for the last 15 years or more know him to be an honorable man, somebody who’s dedicated not only to [the] rule of law but also to the Department of Justice.”