We are infested with snakes. One such snake is South Carolina senator, Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham has been in politics since 1993. In 2015, he sought out nomination to be the Republican candidate for President. In 2016, he was a critic of Donald Trump. He gave us all a fair warning to what he is now doing his best to contribute to;
"If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed...and we will deserve it." (Lindsey Graham. 2016)
Nowadays Lindsey Graham can be found calling for Volodymyr Zelensky to resign after being berated nonsensically and embarrassingly by our President and Vice President, or he can be found slithering back through his previous beliefs and hissing in his constituents faces. One prior belief he had was this;
"I couldn't go where Donald Trump wanted to take the USA & GOP." (Lindsey Graham. 2016.)
Or even this;
"I don't think [Trump is] racist but he's playing the race card ... I think it's very un-American ... If he continues this line of attack then I think people really need to reconsider the future of the [Republican] party.” (Lindsey Graham. 2016.)
To then say this;
“"If we undercut the president, that's the end of his presidency and the end of our party." (Lindsey Graham. 2019)
So, what changed? How did a man who gave accurate warning against Donald Trump suddenly turn into one of his defenders? One who will vote against the interest of his state to prop up ill thought-out ideas and push the false idea that Donald Trump has a mandate from the American people? (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-does-not-have-mandate/ar-AA1vOPpQ)
Well, first of all we need to recognize that Lindsey Graham wants to feel that he’s doing something. He wants to feel like all the work he’s done in his life will have an obvious culmination in something bigger than himself. Let’s look at what he said about his relationship with Donald Trump in 2019 during an interview with the New York Times, when he was asked how he suddenly became one of Donald Trump's biggest supporters.
Graham responded that he was attempting “to be relevant": "I've got an opportunity up here working with the president to get some really good outcomes for the country ... I have never been called this much by a president in my life ... He's asked me to do some things, and I've asked him to do some things in return." (Lindsey Graham. 2019. New York Times interview.)
Let’s break this down. He stated he was attempting to be "relevant”. Now, maybe what he meant by that was that he wanted to be relevant within the Republican administration. Remember, he tried to get the nomination when Donald Trump first ran. This means he wanted to do something bigger than himself, be part of something, to enact a plan to shape the country into an image he imagined. Whether you agree with his politics or not, he had a direction he wanted to take this country.
Perhaps Lindsey Graham is ingratiating himself with Donald Trump because he knows Donald Trump can be swayed to do what he wants him to do. Graham can find power through Trump. Taking that into account, looking at everything before and everything now, even before breaking down the rest of this quote, you can get the feeling he still views Donald Trump as someone who “doesn’t have a clue about anything” (Lindsey Graham. 2016).
What Graham means by “relevant” is that he wants to be important in decision making and to the GOP. And he feels he is. It’s right there in the quote; “I’ve never been called this much by a president in my life.”
To him, it would perhaps seem, Trump is just a mouthpiece to get his ideas done through. That whole quote showcases this mindset, and further proves that Graham will do whatever he feels he must, however slimy. He perhaps feels that through Trump he has a voice, and perhaps that he can exert a little control over what gets done on the national stage. One would only have to read 'They thought they were free' by Milton Mayer to understand what could be going on with Graham and even other GOP senators that have done an about face when it comes to support for Trump.
" 'little men’ thought they must join, as good men, good Germans, even as good Christians, and when enough of them did they would be able to change the Party. They would ‘bore from within.’ ‘Big men’ told themselves that, too, in the usual sincerity that required them only to abandon one little principle after another, to throw away, little by little, all that was good." (They thought they were free. Milton Mayer)
The problem, if that is indeed what Graham was originally trying to do, is that evil will change you before you can change it. To get along, to try and make it to the end, you must abandon your morals bit by bit. It is always better to do away with evil than it is to join it and then say you tried to change it.
This is also not the first time, allegedly, that Graham has backed a man who called himself king either, nor the first time he’s backed a man who claimed he could make America great again. The other man Graham backed was Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Moon was the head of the Unification church, and was also a convict and a conman. In 1982 he was convicted of trying to defraud the federal government and income tax fraud. (https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/19/nyregion/rev-moon-is-convicted-of-income-tax-fraud.html) He also was in favor of doing away with the Constitution, and having himself installed as the unquestionable head of America. It seems Lindsey Graham has a type. In 2004 Graham allegedly helped organize the coronation of this man as "King of Peace". (https://www.salon.com/2004/06/21/moon_7/) The Unification church has ties to other conservative groups, but that's an essay for another time.
I'll leave us with this;
"He's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot ... He doesn't represent my [Republican] party ... I don't think he has a clue about anything ... He is empowering radical Islam ... You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell." (Lindsey Graham, 2016)
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