January 13, 2021

After Quitting Trump for a Week, Graham Now Claims Trump Wants Calm and “Orderly Transition”

The South Carolina Republican appears to believe that punishing the president is a far more dangerous option than feeding the mob.

Gripas Yuri/ZUMA

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With the House all but certain to impeach Donald Trump for the second time on Wednesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham blasted the proceedings, claiming that impeachment would only inflame the country’s tensions. The South Carolina Republican also falsely claimed that Trump, who showed a stunning lack of regret yesterday over his role in inciting last week’s mob violence, had sought calm and was “committed to an orderly transfer of power.”

Graham’s tweets slamming impeachment, in addition to flagrantly lying about Trump’s desire for peace, come as a dramatic reversal. After the pro-Trump mob unleashed violence in the name of the president last week, a visibly exasperated Graham abandoned Trump, claiming that his “hell of a journey” with the president had finally come to an end. “Enough is enough,” he said. It marked a significant break for a Republican who spent the past four years fashioning himself into one of the president’s fiercest allies—not that we were buying it.

It’s unclear what exactly has convinced Graham to suddenly go running back to Trump. But it likely has something to do with getting repeatedly called a “traitor” by a group of Trump supporters at the airport last Friday. Either way, with Graham’s sharp about-face, he now appears to believe that punishing the president is a far more dangerous option than surrendering to the mob. It’s anyone’s guess which other Trump enablers who condemned him last week will now follow in Graham’s cowardly steps.

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