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The former president accused his most loyal footstool of being a “RINO,” though it’s pretty clear Graham can’t stay mad at the guy.
One member of the GOP who consistently stood out from the bunch in his fealty to 45 was Senator Lindsey Graham. After declaring in June 2016 that he wouldn’t support Trump’s bid for office, referring to the then Republican candidate as a “jackass,” a “kook,” “a race-baiting bigot,” and “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party,” Graham subsequently became one of Trump’s most ardent and obsequious fans.
When Democrats were getting ready to impeach the guy the first time around, over his attempt to extort another country for his personal gain, Graham told reporters the whole thing should be “disposed of very quickly” by the Senate. When people brought up the fact that Trump regularly slandered Graham’s friend John McCain even after McCain was dead, the senator from South Carolina said he was willing to overlook the attacks because “when we play golf, it’s fun.” Two months after a literal insurrection, Graham told Axios: “Donald Trump was my friend before the riot and I’m trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot. I still consider him a friend.” Pressed on the fact that he’d already been reelected for another six years, so politically, he didn’t have to keep this relationship going, Graham doubled down, telling reporter Jonathan Swan it would be “too easy” to simply dump the guy, before claiming, in a highly worrisome way, that while there was a “dark side” to the man who incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, there was also “some magic there.”
In short, Graham has more than proved his servility to Trump over the last six years, and should probably be inducted into some kind of Hall of Fame for bootlicking hacks, or given a key to Mar-a-Lago. Unfortunately, Graham forgot the cardinal rule of serving at the pleasure of Trump, which is that one must vigorously and without fail agree with every single thing the guy does and says, at all times, forever and always. Instead, God help him, the Republican lawmaker expressed an independent thought, and this happened:
Yes, Trump dubbed Graham, a lifelong Republican, a Republican in Name Only, in an interview with Newsmax that aired Tuesday night. That may not sound so bad to some people, but as Trump made clear in 2020, it’s among the worst things he can think to accuse someone of. (“Do you know what RINO is?” he asked a crowd in Arizona. “A RINO may be the lowest form of human life.”) Why is Graham, in Trump’s eyes, a RINO? Because Graham had claimed it was “inappropriate” for Trump to say over the weekend that he might pardon some of the January 6 rioters if reelected in 2024, a move that effectively would allow Trump supporters to get away with waging a violent insurrection.
“Lindsey Graham doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about if he says that,” Trump added to Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt.
Which is not a very nice thing to say about someone who’s basically had his head lodged inside your ass for over half a decade now! Though if we know Lindsey, and we think we do, it’ll all be water under the bridge by the end of the month. Last week, the South Carolina senator said in an interview with Fox’s Brian Kilmeade that he’d spent the “whole weekend” with Trump and suggested that the ex-president apparently has total control over the Republican Party. “He will be the nominee in 2024 if he wants it. Stay tuned,” Graham said, adding: “From my point of view, there’s nobody that’s going to beat Donald Trump if he wants to run.”
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