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Lindsey Graham's Transformation From Trump Critic to Lap Dog
Lindsey Graham's Transformation From Trump Critic to Lap Dog
A new ad uses the Republican senator's own words to show "the two faces of Lindsey Graham."
A new ad opposing the reelection of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina uses his own words against him, noting that he's gone from calling Donald Trump a "kook" and a "bigot" to deeming him "a damn good president."
The ad highlighting "the two faces of Lindsey Graham," from a super PAC called Lindsey Must Go, contrasts "old Lindsey" with "new Lindsey." It shows, among other things, "old Lindsey" referring to Trump as "a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot," then "new Lindsey" saying the president "deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and then some."
The three-term Republican senator is facing a serious challenge this year from Democrat Jaime Harrison. Super PACs can't coordinate with candidates, but Harrison is likely to benefit from the ad, Jonathan Capehart writes in The Washington Post.
"We believe that we can make the case that Lindsey Graham has been a failure to South Carolina," Harrison told Capehart a few months ago. The ad, Capehart writes in a Friday column, "makes the case better than anyone else could -- especially since Graham does all the talking."
Graham has always been a solid conservative, but he once exhibited at least a degree of integrity and was one of the few Republicans willing to criticize Trump; now he's become a sycophant. "Here's a guy that many of us had tremendous respect for. Because when John McCain was alive, we thought in the end of the day he would do the right thing for either the state or the nation when the rubber met the road," Harrison told Capehart; McCain, the U.S. senator from Arizona who died in 2018, was Graham's closest friend. "But what we have now seen is that this guy's only interest is in Lindsey O. Graham. His only interest is being in the middle of things, to have power."
"Lindsey Graham has done both the impossible and the unthinkable: He went from being the late John McCain's best friend to Donald Trump's best friend," Jimmy Williams, senior adviser to the Lindsey Must Go PAC, told the journalist. "We're simply tired of his snarling, revengeful, dirty payback politics down here, and I promise you we will do whatever we legally can to make his last nine months in the U.S. Senate a miserable hell."
Watch the ad below.
