At one point, Sessions seemed to mock a Justice Department intern for questioning whether marijuana is dangerous. He said cities like Chicago and Baltimore are now plagued with rising crime and murders because they “have abandoned traditional police activities.” And he dismissed another intern’s assertion that many Americans in poor, largely minority communities fear law enforcement officers.

“I grew up in one of these communities,” the intern, who said he attends the University of California, Berkeley, told Sessions. “I grew up in a project to a single mother. And the people who we are afraid of are not necessarily our neighbors, but the police.”

An apparently exasperated Sessions replied: “Well, that may be the view in Berkeley, but it’s not the view” elsewhere.