Lindsey Graham gets caught with his pants down
Lindsey Graham went from being one of the loudest voices of the conservative #NeverTrump movement, to being one of Donald Trump’s most embarrassing toadies – doing a complete 180 on all of those times he rightfully called Trump a kook and a racist. Instead, his legacy will now be his loud and paranoid tantrums he likes to throw in public hearings when things aren’t looking so well for him and his fellow Republicans, and how he’s rapidly making a farce of the Senate Judiciary Committee which he chairs. Now, it seems as if his rapid transition into Donald Trump may be complete, as he finds himself in a new scandal of his very own – one that has nothing to do with Trump or Russia.
Despite all the confusion Sharpiegate may have caused in the last six days, Hurricane Dorian may not have hit Alabama, but it has brought flooding and power outages to Graham’s home state of South Carolina. At present, 200,000 people in the state are without power, but Lindsey Graham is 5,000 miles away from home, on a state visit to Croatia and Montenegro. Graham knew about the hurricane at least a week in advance, but he chose to go on his trip anyway.
Unfortunately, Graham chose a bad time to go on the trip, as he’s up for re-election next year and riding on the coattails of a historically unpopular candidate, regardless of how wonderful he says Trump is. His 2020 Democratic opponent, Jaime Harrison, is a strong candidate who has already criticized Graham’s lack of character, weighed in on his trip: “He should have followed the lead of other elected officials and stood with us as we weathered the storm. His failure to come home continues his pattern of putting himself before the very people who elected him.”
When Trump ran in the Republican primary, Graham warned: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed, and we will deserve it.” It’s just about the only thing he’s said that’s still true – and all the more reason to vote every last one out of office by 2020.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making