POLITICUSUSA
As of right now, despite all of his troubles, Donald Trump is still he figurehead of the Republican party. In order to stay there, however, he is not only going to need to avoid trouble, he is going to have prove he can get Republicans elected.
The Delta variant has created a major issue for residents of all states, but especially those who have a Trumpian Republican governor. And rather than trying to use this moment to encourage vaccinations, many Conservative pundits have chosen to keep referring to COVID as no big deal.
In the run-up to the January 6th insurrection, Lindsey Graham did plenty to help Donald Trump spread misinformation. The South Carolina senator went as far as to call Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to inquire about the state‘s vote count.
Donald Trump lost the presidential election in 2020. The GOP was also unable to take the house and lost control of the senate in January. Most people watching would realize that Trump was a drag on the party, especially in the suburbs.
Over the last 15 months, the US has been gripped by the worst pandemic in 100 years. The COVID-19 virus caused many businesses to be shuttered and put millions of Americans out of work.
The economy is quickly recovered, but there are many people in the country that still need help. To that end, most states expanded their unemployment benefits. Republican lawmakers are claiming that these benefits are preventing people from going back to work. Lindsey Graham took it a step further Tuesday claiming that he has family members that “ain’t working.”
Lindsey Graham has rarely shown any kind of backbone since Donald Trump took over the Republican party. He was fiercely opposed to Trump during the 2016 primary but is now one of his biggest enablers.
And the former president is still obsessed with the claim that he was cheated out of the 2020 election. And his message certainly resonates with those who support the GOP. According to a recent poll, 67% of Republican voters don’t believe that Biden was the winner of the most recent election.
A long, long time ago, Lindsey Graham was seen as a senator willing to make deals on both sides of the aisle. But the South Carolina senator is now very far away from those days.
Graham, more than perhaps any other prominent Republican lawmaker, is all in on Donald Trump. He recently said that the party can’t even move forward without Trump at its head.
Over the last 20 years, the United States has experienced a number of mass shootings. 2021 has been no different. There have been high-profile massacres in both Atlanta, Georgia and Boulder, Colorado.
And the responses to the mass shootings have followed the usual script. Democrats use the incidents to call for common sense gun controls. And Republicans clutch their pearls and claim that if assault weapons are banned, Americans will have no way to defend themselves.
On Monday, the United States suffered yet another mass shooting. The gunman in the Boulder, Colorado incident was armed with a Ruger AR-556.
As is the norm when a mass shooting occurs, Democrats called for common sense gun reform. Like the stimulus bill, gun control is not only popular with Democratic voters. Polls regularly show support for expanded gun control in the 80’s or 90’s.
Donald Trump would very much like to be the future of the Republican party. He certainly has a lot of support. 43 senators just voted to acquit him during his impeachment trial. Over 150 congresspeople decided to join in on his election fight.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has refused a call to hold a quick confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland, who President Joe Biden has nominated to serve as the nation’s attorney general. Garland’s hearing is scheduled for February 8.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough criticized Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) for downplaying the January 6 storming of the United States Capitol, which took place after former President Donald Trump urged his supporters to march on Congress in a bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The president’s supporters were egged on by the president’s claims of widespread election fraud, which has debunked by news outlets, government agencies, and independent observers alike.
Senate Republicans are now gearing up to acquit Trump in an impeachment trial on the specious rationale that putting a former officeholder on trial is unconstitutional, even though legal scholars, including some from the conservative Federalist Society, have broadly affirmed the constitutionality of such a proceeding.
When Donald Trump was seeking the Republican nomination in 2016, Lindsey Graham delivered a warning to his party. “If we nominate Donald Trump,” the South Carolina senator tweeted, “we will get destroyed and we will deserve it.”
It took quite a while for his prediction to come to pass, but it seems to be coming true. The GOP is splitting into a pro-Trump faction and an anti-Trump faction. Mitch McConnell seemingly believes that Trump is hurting the party and may vote to convict him.
McConnell’s turn against Trump has, of course, enraged many of the ex-President’s staunchest supporters. This includes Trump super-fan Lou Dobbs. Dobbs lit into McConnell during his Thursday show.
Speaking of the senate minority leader, the Fox Business host began, “
I wish he’d have thought of that first. It would be the least that President Trump should have been able to expect from a leader of the House of Representatives. Or, for that matter, the leader of the Senate for the Republicans, Mitch McConnell.”
Following the November election, Donald Trump essentially stopped doing his job. And it was a bad time to stop as the coronavirus had raged out of control for the last two months. The ex-President ignored the crisis, preferring to complain about imaginary election fraud.
Joe Biden, however, has made getting COVID-19 vaccines into American arms his number one priority. Today, Team Biden introduced a plan to combat the coronavirus and Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke to reporters.
Amazon, seeing how serious Biden is treating the pandemic, has offered to help with logistics. On Thursday, Lindsey Graham blasted the company for not making the same offer to Donald Trump.
Graham made the comments to Fox News Sandra Smith. She asked him, “if it turns out that Jeff Bezos and Amazon put politics ahead of public health, should there be some sort of accountability there?”
Lindsey Graham is livid because Amazon is helping Biden deliver the vaccine, but didn’t help Trump. pic.twitter.com/N67IxezEEL
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) January 22, 2021
Republican lawmakers have let Donald Trump get away with pretty much anything over the last 4 years. Their enabling the President, in part, led to the terrorist attack on the US Capitol last week.
And no Republican enabled Trump more than Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina senator, who stood in angry opposition to Trump during the 2016 primaries, later became one of his biggest fans.
When Trump supporters stormed the Capitol last week, though, Graham was looking everywhere for help. And according to Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Graham berated police officers for not doing enough to protect him from Trump‘s mob.
Brown told Ari Melber, “I heard when we — when 175 senators were confined in a room with about 75 staff people, Lindsey Graham with his mask off started screaming at one of the officers, I think it was one of the captains, saying ‘How come you didn’t protect us?’ This is the same Lindsey graham that for five years — or for fours years, he didn’t do it at the beginning, defended and argued for and abetted this president.”
Melber jumped in, “You saw — senator, while you were still in the emergency of it, you saw Senator Graham yelling or berating an officer? What was he getting at?”
Sen. Sherrod Brown: While We Were in Lockdown at Capitol, Lindsey Graham was Berating Police Officers For Not Doing a Good Enough Job of Protecting Lawmakers. pic.twitter.com/GnY2mtKZLY
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa)
January 12, 2021
On Monday, Attorney General William Barr announced that he will be stepping down from his position shortly before Christmas. His replacement will be Jeff Rosen, who is currently serving as Barr’s number 2.
Rosen, of course, won’t be holding his position for very long. Joe Biden will be taking over as President on January 20th and will be selecting his own Attorney General.
There are a few different names on Biden’s short list, including Merrick Garland and former Alabama senator Doug Jones. Another potential candidate, Sally Yates, is drawing the ire of GOP lawmakers.
While Yates is incredibly qualified and experienced, Republicans are still angry about her role investigating the ties between Donald Trump and Russia.
When asked if he would consider approving Yates as Attorney General, Texas’ John Cornyn simply said, “no.”
Chuck Grassley gave a longer answer. He told reporters, “
I think there’s plenty of people that he wouldn’t have to take a chance on her.” The Iowa senator also referred to Yates previous investigation into Trump as “very worrisome.”
At one time, Lindsey Graham and Joe Biden were very good friends. They worked together in the senate for decades and forged a strong bond despite their political differences. There was even a viral video where Graham glowingly talked about the friendship calling Biden one of the best friends he ever had.
Things have changed quite a bit since that video was made. Graham has become a severe Trump sycophant and is willing to do anything to protect the president. It has now gone far enough that the South Carolina senator isn’t even willing to say that Biden won the 2020 election.
CNN’s Manu Raju asked Graham on Monday if he thinks Trump should attend Biden’s inauguration. The GOP lawmaker responded, “If Biden ends up winning, yeah I think so. I think it’s good for the country, it’d be good for him. We’ll know in December. I hope Biden will come to his.”
Graham also told me that he spoke with Trump this weekend. “He's gonna fight for every vote and push systems to get better, and I said, ‘Keep it up.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 30, 2020
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) made headlines last night after Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Graham suggested he should try to toss out legal ballots in the state, where a recount is underway.
Today, Graham is leading a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election,” which prompted a response from the government watchdog group Citizens for Ethics in Washington (CREW).
“The thing that’s most urgent about censorship, suppression and the 2020 election is that Lindsey Graham reportedly tried to interfere in the counting of votes in Georgia. If true, he should resign from his chairmanship immediately,” the organization wrote.
The thing that's most urgent about censorship, suppression and the 2020 election is that Lindsey Graham reportedly tried to interfere in the counting of votes in Georgia. If true, he should resign from his chairmanship immediately. https://t.co/MsGIw3HOBG
There are a lot of things going wrong for Lindsey Graham right now. The South Carolina senator has been getting crushed fundraising wise and has taken to regularly begging for donations on Fox News.
Graham is also up against a really tough challenger in Jaime Harrison. And Harrison has been getting under the senator’s skin in the worst way. The democratic challenger when viral during their first debate when he brought his own plexiglass divider.
The men were set to debate again tonight. Graham decided not to participate. The incumbent senator has decided that it is more important to be in Washington DC to concentrate on the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination process.
Harrison wasn’t about the let Graham live the decision down. He told SiriusXM’s Laura Coates:
“This is probably the most historic Senate race in the history of this state, and to have Sen. Graham ducking and dodging [the debate] is really sad, but it’s a testament to who he is. He believes that he represents the interest in Washington, D.C., instead of representing the interests of the people in South Carolina. And that’s why he’s on the verge of getting that one-way ticket back home.”