What the hell is wrong with this guy?
What’s wrong with Lindsey Graham? The question has been on all of our minds for almost two years now – roughly when the senator abruptly became a different person from the Never Trumper he was at the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency and suddenly declared himself to be boarding the Trump train.
For some time, even throughout the Kavanaugh hearings, it was largely media pundits asking what changed – could he be getting blackmailed by Trump or the Russians? Was it just a ploy for getting what he and his fellow Republicans always wanted? Things have heated up in the last few weeks – partially in thanks to his declaration that he wouldn’t even consider impeachment, regardless of where the evidence may lead.
Other members of Congress began asking the same question publicly, and now we’re seeing presidential candidates question his stability as his actions get more reckless by the day. It’s bad enough that he’s launching an investigation into one of Donald Trump’s political opponents while Trump is facing impeachment for pretty much the same crime – but this week he managed to do something even dumber, and there’s a video of it too.
A veterans’ advocacy group called Common Defense recently released a video in which Graham was approached by Iraq War veteran Jeff Key, who asked him about his refusal to consider the evidence against Trump. Unsurprisingly, Graham dismissed him and fled the interview in a panic, saying he disagreed that defending Trump blindly was a violation of his oath to the Constitution. Pundits asking how low Graham can go is one thing, but when everyday people start asking the question in public – it’s a different story. Expect to see this clip again and again in his opponent’s ads. The trouble is – whatever the Senate decides to do regarding impeachment, Graham’s reputation has nowhere to go but down, even if he were to turn against Trump again.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making