Attorney General Jeff Sessions, once one of the most powerful insiders outside of the West Wing, “absolutely” has the confidence of President Trump, a White House spokeswoman said Thursday, following stunning revelations about why Sessions is actually on the outs with the boss.

News broke that Sessions even offered his resignation several weeks ago, and while Trump refused to accept it, the AG has now joined the sorry death march of the inner circle where nearly everyone has at some point fallen out of the president’s favor and been left to wonder when the ax could fall. While son-in-law Jared Kushner can’t get fired, even he is now soldiering through the discomfort of having disappointed the president.

Seemingly out of the blue, Trump rebuked Sessions in a Twitter eruption Monday morning. “The Justice Department should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down politically correct version they submitted to S.C.,” Trump declared about a revised order he signed, as if the attorney general had gone rogue and undermined him. The tweet stunned many who had watched the unwavering loyalty Sessions has shown Trump, particularly after the release of the “Access Hollywood” recording, when many cut and ran.

The following day the New York Times reported that Trump has turned on Sessions. According to the story, the president has “intermittently fumed for months over Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian meddling” after failing to disclose meetings with the Russian ambassador during the presidential campaign. In Trump’s view, aides said, “it was that recusal that eventually led to the appointment of a special counsel who took over the investigation.” They added that “Trump has not stopped burning about the decision, in occasional spurts, toward Mr. Sessions.”

The knife twist continued when White House press secretary Sean Spicer, asked if the president still had confidence in Sessions, replied, “I have not had a discussion with him about that.” It wasn’t subtle, and though it would be corrected by Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday when she enthused that indeed the president does have confidence in his AG, the damage was done.

It would be hard to overstate the support then-Sen. Jeff Sessions provided to bolster Donald Trump’s political fortunes in his battle to win the GOP nomination, and ultimately the presidency, as the only senator to endorse Trump before he became the presumptive GOP nominee.

Sessions also goes back years with chief strategist Steve Bannon, connected by their anti-immigration and nationalist worldview, and Sessions’ former top aide -- Stephen Miller -- works with Bannon and helped author Trump’s key speeches for his trip overseas last month, in addition to the travel ban. Next to Kushner, Sessions was as close as anyone can get to being a made man in the administration.

He was, beyond question, well qualified for the attorney general job and has been hard at work dramatically reshaping drug, crime, immigration, civil rights and policing policies, while maintaining the low media profile his press-obsessed boss prefers from subordinates. Ironically, more than anyone on Trump’s staff, other Cabinet secretaries or Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Sessions has done the most to further Trump’s policy vision of “Making America Great Again.”

And more importantly, before the president dumped on him, Sessions had already sullied his credibility in service to Trump. We may never know what Trump asked of Sessions -- did he ask him to stop the investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn as well? Did he openly discuss with Sessions his desire to fire James Comey because of the Russia probe before he asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Sessions meet with him on May 8 to discuss grounds for firing the FBI director?

We do know Sessions lingered in the room on Valentine’s Day when President Trump asked everyone to leave so he could speak alone with Comey, but ultimately Sessions did as Trump asked and left. Sessions is not only the nation’s top cop, but is tasked with policing the president as well. It doesn’t appear he did so on that occasion. In addition, despite his recusal from the Russia investigation, Sessions arguably violated it by engaging with Trump in the firing.

Comey reportedly revealed in closed session before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday that there may have been a third, previously undisclosed, meeting between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. This could bring more friction with Trump, though if Flynn is any example, it’s not undisclosed meetings that bother the president. Trump remains remarkably loyal to Flynn, now under criminal investigation by the FBI. But Sessions is paying a price for his recusal from the probe, which Trump views not as something he had to do but something he chose to do that is unhelpful -- to Trump.