"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it."
Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC ·May 3, 2016
Ah, Lindsey Graham.
What can one say about this man?
Well, here is how I would sum him up in as quick and concise a manner as I suspect possible: in him you see the example of the worst kind of duplicity evident in prominent American politicians.
In 2015 and well into 2016, Graham absolutely dreaded the possibility of Donald Trump receiving the Republican nomination for the presidency. How can anyone know that? Well, at least in public statements, Graham made his dislike of Trump very clear. Crystal clear, frankly. He felt that Trump was a divider, a racist and xenophobe, and that he lacked the temperament to be the President of the United States. Also, he outright expressed his belief that if the Republicans actually went ahead with allowing Trump to become the GOP’s nominee for the White House, it would destroy the party and, moreover, the Republican party would deserve it. Here is his exact wording from his tweet on May 3, 2016:
"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it."
Graham made his official dislike and distrust of Trump very public with some other words that the media jumped on, as well. Here are some other examples:
September 2015: “I think the wall Donald Trump is building is between us and Hispanics.”
December 2015: A Trump nomination “would be an utter, complete and total disaster. If you’re a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot, you’re going to have a hard time being president of the United States, and you’re going to do irreparable damage to the party.”
December 2015: “You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell. He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represents the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. … He’s the ISIL man of the year.”
March 2016: “The bottom line is that I believe Donald Trump would be an absolute, utter disaster for the Republican Party, destroy conservatism as we know it. We’d get wiped out, and it would take generations to overcome a Trump candidacy. Here is why we’re losing the Hispanic vote. Nobody is going to listen to you about your economic plan or your ability to defend the nation if you’re going to deport their grandmother. This is why we’re getting killed with Hispanics. And Mr. Trump has taken every problem we have had with Hispanics and poured gasoline on it.
May 2016: “I…cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as Commander in Chief. I think Donald Trump is going to places where very few people have gone and I’m not going with him. Eating a taco is probably not going to fix the problems we have with Hispanics. I think embracing Donald Trump is embracing demographic death.”
Pretty damning, right?
Well, Graham then spent pretty much the entirety of Trump’s four years in the Oval Office bending over backwards to defend this man, and seemingly praising his every action. On those occasions when Trump would do something that was completely indefensible – and there were too damn many of those kinds of instances to list here – Graham seemed to remain quiet on the sidelines, not going particularly far to criticize the man who had ascended to the presidency. And these things certainly did not make Graham so much as scratch his head or have his loyal support of Trump waver in the least.
The about face was rather stunning, and showed a level of disgusting and cynical political maneuvering, of intellectual and moral dishonesty an bankruptcy, and of stunning and transparent levels of self-contradiction. Graham shamelessly defended Trump at every turn, and did so very publicly, in front of the entire world.
Now, however, Trump is out of office. And once again, Graham’s once unwavering support of Trump is once again expressing some doubts.
No, he has not digressed from his bootlicker tendencies. He still goes over the top to praise Trump, and to suggest that the future of the party really cannot be separated from Trump, even though he is now a former president, with a polarizing brand of politics that likely cost the Republicans the House in 2018, and the Senate and the White House in 2020. Graham could not accept this defeat, until January 6th, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in what they believed to be an effort to effectively nullify an election and keep Trump in the White House. Graham, who had become one of the most iconic and loyal supporters of Trump in the previous four years, suddenly stated that Biden had won the election outright, and that Trump had not offered any serious shred of proof in his relentless allegations of massive voter fraud.
“Donald Trump was my friend before the riot,” Graham said. “And I’m trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot. I still consider him a friend. What happened was a dark day in American history, and we’re going to move forward. So here’s what you need to know about me: I want this to continue — I want us to continue the policies that I think will make America strong. I believe the best way for the Republican Party to do that is with Trump, not without Trump.”
In a 2019 interview with the New York Times magazine, for instance, he described a mostly transactional relationship with Trump by saying, “If you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this.” Pressed on what “this” was, he said it “is to try to be relevant.”
Graham has alternately praised Trump for letting him be a part of Trump’s world, as though he’s not a member of a branch of government that is supposed to be coequal to the presidency. He described Trump as “a cross between Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan and P.T. Barnum,” and someone who both has a “dark side” and is capable of “magic.”
“What I’m trying to do is just harness the magic,” Graham said. Then comes the interesting part.
Yet despite still praising Trump and saying that Republicans are better off with him than without him, he also warns that he could destroy the Republican party, and likened it to a hostage situation.
“He could make the Republican Party something that nobody else I know can make it,” Graham said, comparing Trump’s “magic” to what John McCain and Mitt Romney were unable to build with the party.
“He can make it bigger. He can make it stronger. He can make it more diverse. And he also could destroy it.”
Maybe Graham was right in 2016. Donald Trump’s rise may yet lead to the destruction of the Republican party.
And if it does, just like Graham stated, it will be well-deserved. Frankly, perhaps the most glaring paradox in all of this is that almost no single Republican bears more responsibility for this than Graham himself.
Below are the links to the articles and Graham's tweet from May 3, 2016, all of which I used in writing this blog entry, and from which I obtained the quotes used in this particular blog entry:
Lindsey Graham @LindseyGrahamSC ·May 3, 2016 If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.
https://twitter.com/
12 Times Lindsey Graham Rebuked Donald Trump’s Candidacy by Gabe Ortiz, May 24, 2016:
https://americasvoice.org/
Lindsey Graham points to GOP’s reality under Trump: It’s a hostage situation by Aaron Blake March 8, 2021:
You say that like being duplicitous, untrustworthy and completely shameless are BAD things...
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