PAINT ROCK, Ala. — At a senior center here in the northeast corner of Alabama, one decree ordinarily rises above the rules of Rook and dominoes: No talking about politics or religion. But by late this week, after days of watching President Trump excoriate and belittle Attorney General Jeff Sessions, some seniors were ready to let the rule slide so they could defend an Alabamian.

“I think everybody’s been a little aggravated,” Wilma Counts, a retired seamstress who has voted for both men, said before a lunch of smoked sausage, sliced peaches and yellow cake. “I want Trump to stay because I think he’s got some good ideas, but I don’t like him picking on Sessions.”

Alabama may adore Mr. Trump, but this is a state that first loved Mr. Sessions.

And to a striking degree in a state where Mr. Trump won 62 percent of the vote last fall, Republicans and Democrats alike have closed ranks around Mr. Sessions, who was the state attorney general before he won a Senate seat four times and joined the president’s cabinet. Interviews with voters from four counties, three of which supported Mr. Trump, revealed near-absolute confidence in Mr. Sessions’s virtue and conservatism, a swelling of state pride and, in this case at least, an encroaching skepticism of the president.

In Montgomery, the capital, Perry O. Hooper Jr., a former state legislator and a co-chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign in Alabama, said, “Jeff Sessions is a man of great character and integrity, he’s a good man, and he is the king of the hill in Alabama.’’