Lindsey Graham fooled me. Don’t let him fool you with Donald Trump | Opinion
I feel the need to again apologize to everyone in these great United States of America. I helped thrust U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham on you. Not only did he once get my vote, I was among the naïve idiots who believed he was a statesman who would place country above party.
It’s time for more penance because Graham is running around screaming about the election. The uninitiated might take him seriously in a way I did all those years ago. He is effective at play-acting righteous anger the way only a Southern gentleman lawyer can. He could use those skills for good.
Instead, he’s using them to try and return to the White House the man who incited a violent insurrection attempt on our Capitol.
In a way he likely didn’t intend, Graham recently did say something true.
“What about the Supreme Court? If [Trump’s] president of the United States with a Republican Senate, we can have a generation of conservatives on the Supreme Court,” Graham recently told Fox News. “This is a very big deal, to shape the court for the next generation.”
Graham sees that outcome as a good thing. For the growing number of women and girls who can get pregnant — and the men who love and should support them — and have faced dangerous and sometimes fatal hurdles to health care access, I can’t think of many things scarier. That reality has come courtesy of the anti-abortion laws made possible by Trump’s Supreme Court, the composition of which came courtesy of lies by Graham and other Republican senators.
Because of Graham’s demeanor, if you haven’t followed him as long as I have, you can be fooled into believing he’s a principled-straight shooter with whom you might have disagreements but know his views come from a principled place.
He’s not.
As Trump was rising but before the former “The Apprentice” star took control of the Republican Party, Graham spoke the truth when others wouldn’t, or at least not as clearly as he did:
“[Trump is] a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for.”
That wasn’t the typical criticism leveled at a member of the same party during a primary. It was deeper and felt sincere — because the evidence for what Graham said was obvious to anyone willing to pay attention. That’s the Graham I thought I had once supported. But as soon as Trump secured power, Graham took it all back, placing party over country.
Though he’s South Carolina’s senior U.S. Senator, just weeks ago he flew out to Nebraska to try and rig the election in favor of Trump. He wanted that state to change its election rules at the last minute.
Nebraska is one of two states that doesn’t provide its Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote. Maine is the other. That “red state” awards those votes based on how presidential candidates do in three congressional districts. Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to win one of those districts. Depending on how the vote unfolds throughout the rest of the country, that one electoral vote might be enough to put her over the top.
Graham did something similar in November 2020 when he went to Georgia — which was under pressure from Trump to overturn the election — pretending it was just part of his senatorial duties. Fortunately, Republican officials in the Peach State put country over party in a way I wrongly believed Graham would.
Graham is the ideal Trump sycophant. He has no shame. He pretends to care about a democracy he routinely undermines. He cares about power alone. I didn’t know that when Graham, and his compelling backstory, convinced me he was as genuine as he sounded.
He’s not. Remember that the next time you see him righteously wagging his finger on “Meet the Press.”