For the better part of a decade, the senior senator from South Carolina was enmeshed in an on-again, off-again—but mainly on-again—bromance with Donald J. Trump.
Since Lindsey Graham was eulogized today as a cross between George Washington and Nelson Mandela, I thought I’d set the record straight. 1.
It began when both men were running for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. At the time, Graham had some pretty harsh words for his GOP rival.
“There’s only one way to make America great again,” he said. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
Snap! But Lindsey was just warming up. He’d go on to call Trump “crazy,” “a jackass,” and “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot” who “shouldn’t be commander-in-chief.”
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” he said, “and we will deserve it.” Why was he so sure that Trump would lose? “Donald Trump is the most unelectable Republican I’ve seen in my lifetime,” he said.
As for Trump’s mental health, Lindsey offered this succinct diagnosis: “I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy.” 2.
Just one year later, when the crazy xenophobic jackass was chain-slurping Diet Cokes in the Oval Office, Graham decided to revise that assessment somewhat. 3.
“What concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label the guy as some kind of kook not fit to be president,” he told CNN.
This sort of flip-flop worked so much better before the invention of Google. But Lindsey seemed to hope that by piling praise on the man he once wished would go to hell, we’d forget about all that mean stuff he’d said before. By 2018, Graham was bizarrely claiming that Trump “deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and then some.” 4.
In his quest to suck up to Trump as strenuously as possible, Graham hurled himself into self-abasement as if it were an extreme sport. When Trump relentlessly insulted the memory of John McCain—purportedly Graham’s best friend when they were Senate colleagues—Lindsey responded with astonishing nonchalance.
“I don’t like what he says about John McCain,” Graham told Bloomberg. “But when we play golf, it’s fun.” 5.
Yes, Lindsey apparently lost his moral compass somewhere in the sand trap of the Trump National Golf Club. That’s why it was so striking when he seemed to express genuine outrage on the floor of the Senate after Trump incited the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. 6.
“Trump and I… we’ve had a hell of a journey,” he said. “I hate it to end this way. Oh my god, I hate it… but today, all I can say is ‘Count me out. Enough is enough.’” 7.
Alas, Lindsey’s appearance on the right side of history turned out to be a head-fake, as his hell of a journey with the insurrectionist-in-chief was far from over. 8. Like his fellow quisling, Mitch McConnell, Graham voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial. 9. And once it became clear that launching a coup against the US government wasn’t a deal-breaker for 99 percent of the GOP, Lindsey was hitting the links with the wannabe junta leader once more. 10.
“I’m trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot,” he told Axios two months after January 6. “I still consider him a friend. What happened was a dark day in American history. And we’re going to move forward.” 11.
Lindsey just couldn’t quit him.
All of the events I’ve recounted thus far are sufficient to qualify Graham as a traitor. 12.His defenders, though, might raise a mitigating factor: his hawkish stance against the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.
In this regard, Graham was always on the same page as his Senate pal McCain. Responding to George W. Bush’s gullible assessment of the murderous Russian (”I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”), McCain quipped, “I looked in Mr. Putin’s eyes and I saw three letters—a K, a G and B.”
But Graham might have topped McCain in his detestation of Putin. Calling him a “war criminal” and “not a legitimate leader,” in 2022 he proposed assassination as the swiftest way to end the war in Ukraine: “I just want him to go…I wish somebody had taken Hitler out in the ‘30s.”
When the International Criminal Court, in a somewhat less draconian measure, issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023, Lindsey hailed the decision: “To forgive and forget Putin’s war crimes—that are occurring on an industrial scale—would irrevocably damage the Rule of Law-based world order established at the end World War II.”
That “Rule of Law-based world order” was shredded in the Oval Office last year when Trump and JD Vance disgracefully ganged up on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for having the audacity to suggest that Putin might not be a trustworthy fellow. 13. Aware of Graham’s longstanding hatred of the man he called a war criminal, I eagerly awaited his rousing statement of support for Zelenskyy.
Instead, Lindsey told reporters, “What I saw in the Oval Office was disrespectful, and I don’t know if we could ever do business with Zelensky again… I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of JD Vance standing up for our country.” 14.
That kind of statement made many people wish Lindsey would go to hell. Done.
Imagine, the author of that was a finalist in 2001 and 2005 for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. That unfunny screed might have been used as a napkin at the Algonquin Roundtable. I’m not one of Andy’s fans, but he was a gifted satirist once: would Dave Barry ever have put his name to a similar scrawl? Trump Deranged people think any insult to the object of their unhinged fury is automatically hilarious. I’m sure Robert De Niro was doubled over with mad laughter screaming, “Stop! Stop! You’re killing me!”
“[W]hen the crazy xenophobic jackass was chain-slurping Diet Cokes in the Oval Office (3); “wannabe junta leader” (10): that the best Andy’s got now? “Dick-head” is funnier, and I can hear Trump derided with the level of insult on the playground across the street from my house. Or maybe Andy wasn’t trying to be funny. I hate to break it to him, but keep political analysis is not what people have read him for. As this blot shows, he has nothing to offer in that realm, at least nothing but standard knee-jerk Trump hate. Why would a distinguished professor of history think it’s worth circulating, as a opposed to, say, a good knock-knock joke?
You know why. How do people get that way? I guess in his case, being marinated for decades in a wall-to-wall woke enclave would do it.
As for the rest:
1. The eulogies for every public figure sound like “a cross between George Washington and Nelson Mandela.” Andy isn’t even trying here: satirical pairing once came naturally to him. How about “a cross between Andy of Mayberry and Smokey the Bear”?
2., 3., 4. Andy’s been around enough to know that politicians flip-flopping and allying themselves with former foes is so common that he sounds like a fool for bitching about it. LBJ and JFK? Reagan and George H.W. Bush? Hillary and Obama? Kamala and Biden? Trump and Marco Rubio? Why is he horrified that Graham decided that being an ally of an elected President from his party was the practical, wise approach? Wait, I know. Andy hates Trump. If he were really a Google master, he would know that the phenomenon he feels is do damning is known as “politics as usual.”
I suppose I should also mention that I wrote and said even worse things about Trump in 2015 and 2016 before the election.
5. Trump engages in a lot of insult exchanges, and the one on McCain was among his most foolish and ugliest. (He paid for it, too.) But Lindsey subscribed to the Julie Principle. Smart man…
6. Borowitz stating that Trump incited the January 6 riot is signature significance for an asshole, in my estimation. Nothing in the President’s ill-begotten speech to those idiots qualified as incitement.
7. Sen. Graham was just reading political tea leaves—badly—and going where the polls said to go. Trump’s over-the-line reaction to the dodgy 2020 election seemed to make him radio-active, and Sen. Graham wasn’t going to bury his own career by ignoring the Cognitive Dissonance Scale.
8. “insurrectionist-in-chief ” See #6.
9. Mitch McConnell and Graham voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial because there were no grounds for an impeachment except that the Democrats in the House had the votes to do it. That contrived and partisan impeachment killed any constitutional value the process might have had to keep Presidents. This is just a Trump Derangement delusion unmoored to fact, law or history. I’m honestly surprised. I thought Andy was smarter than this. But Trump Derangement makes you stupid.
11. Pssst! Andy! This statement by Graham is called “being a responsible member of Congress.”
12. As a traitor? Traitor to who or what? Traitor to “the resistance?” Traitor to Andy’s anti-American Hollywood cronies? #12 would be the funniest thing in this screed if we didn’t know Borowitz was serious,
13, 14. Now Andy’s in my wheelhouse, and he looks like an idiot as well as a liar. I posted extensively on this episode from my background in negotiation, the Presidency and ethics. Trump and Vance didn’t “disgracefully [gang] up on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for having the audacity to suggest that Putin “might not be a trustworthy fellow.” They told him off because he was arrogant and disrespectful to the President of the United States, and by extension, the nation he leads. Graham was exactly right, and for correctly assessing the controversy and supporting our President, Borowitz condemned him to Hell.
Hilarious.
Ethics Alarms 
Apparently, TDS is like Herpes it can never be cured. It manifests itself in many different forms from a relatively benign cold sore to a full blown bout of shingles. The only course of action is to manage the symptoms. This is why I have become more of a reader than a commenter.
I don’t see how that follows, Chris.
Chris says: “No comment.”
The term TDS as Jack uses it is, in my opinion, a kind of block so that a genuine, necessary, productive and good critique of Trump, his administration, the present government, and the state of this nation, will not take shape and gain power. And I do not refer to a critique that is Leftist or Progressive of Marxian and ultimately undermining, but one that is Right tending and even radically Right tending. I operate from this base: American Conservatism is largely USELESS in this arena. It is self-deceptive. It cannot and it will not face the ‘real facts’. So it actually and more largely serves those policies and directions set in motion by a power structure allied to the Left.
This was the PURPOSE of Trump’s election run. It was supposed to be and involve a process of renovation of the nation, of the recovery and rebuilding of its industrial base, and it was not going to be about starting wars and embroiling the nation in them as has just occurred. It has gone off on a radically different track and this must be seen, understood and critiqued. To say, if indeed this is said, that the position I have just outlined is one of TDS is false. Full stop.
The problem, as with so much in these times, is to carefully find a way to sift through the varied ‘perception stances’ that are presented, that actually function like ‘propaganda narratives’, and not to be fooled by any of them, and yet to get to some level of descriptive truth about what really is going on. And then to discuss these.
On Rumble, with the title What We ACTUALLY Learned From The Fauci Hearings, Fuentes lays out in coherent detail a genuinely and fairly critical position. I found it useful.
“The term TDS as Jack uses it is, in my opinion, a kind of block so that a genuine, necessary, productive and good critique of Trump, his administration, the present government, and the state of this nation, will not take shape and gain power.”
I stopped reading at that sentence. If you think that, you haven’t been paying attention, or are too biased to see beyond your own nose. That is not how I use “Trump Derangement” and I have never used it that way. “Trump Derangement” is a monomania in which objective assessment of anything related to the elected President of the United States is automatically and reflexively reviled and condemned, where acts and achievements that would be routinely praised if done by any other elected official is condemned, and where the entire framing of this consequential administration is rooted in emotion, primarily hate. I have never accused you of Trump Derangement: you don’t oppose him based on personal animus, you oppose him because you are a committed anti-Semite who can’t regard anything he does objectively because he has remained steadfast to the US-Israel alliance, as her should. That’s no better than Trump Derangement, it’s just different.
““Trump Derangement” is a monomania in which objective assessment of anything related to the elected President of the United States is automatically and reflexively reviled and condemned, where acts and achievements that would be routinely praised if done by any other elected official is condemned, and where the entire framing of this consequential administration is rooted in emotion, primarily hate.”
Indeed, like my Trump-Deranged sister who makes sure to work an anti-Trump comment into every conversation, regardless of the topic, who does not believe anything put out by this administration, even if it’s on a government website, and will not read anything you send her backing up your position. I haven’t asked – and I won’t – but I’m betting she’s one of the people on the Left who believe that Republicans have falsified, edited or cherry-picked Fauci’s diary.
Very early on, I had a good friend who inserted a Trump comment into every communication. I told him he had to stop doing It. He did and has continued to do so. Remarkable.
“chain-slurping Diet Cokes” was the funny part.
I have never accused you of Trump Derangement: you don’t oppose him based on personal animus, you oppose him because you are a committed anti-Semite who can’t regard anything he does objectively because he has remained steadfast to the US-Israel alliance, as he should. That’s no better than Trump Derangement, it’s just different.
That is even more calumnious. And another form of a blocking strategy so that the real issues cannot be seen and addressed. I suppose that you must also say that the faction of Jews across America and the world who have misgivings about Zionism and Israeli policy are also anti-Semites?
Still, I am more interested in the developing Right-tending position that, as mine does, takes issue with American Neocon Conservatism, which is how I interpret your position. The Republicans will very likely ‘suffer losses’ in the Fall; the Radical Left gain more popular power. So a genuine Right position is needed. In my opinion yours is not.
“I suppose that you must also say that the faction of Jews across America and the world who have misgivings about Zionism and Israeli policy are also anti-Semites?” A deflection: I suspect such Jews have been indoctrinated with intersectionality while not knowing their history to the extent that they have been permanently warped. Anti-Israel Jews are an anomaly, like an anti-vegan cow.
You can of course suspect that and many things but that alone will not make it true. Here is the thing, Jack, snd I do say this respectfully. When you say such a thing, which is false, but in so many other areas you are on the mark and quite powerfully so, it has caused me to wonder: To what degree can I trust this man’s larger position at a time when the nation is in crisis? So I will not ever become so ‘deranged’ (irrationally angry and projecting) to make up stories about you (though you do that to me), but rather I will keep struggling to determine to what degree you have a solid, commendable position.
“Here is the thing, Jack, snd I do say this respectfully. When you say such a thing, which is false, but in so many other areas you are on the mark and quite powerfully so, it has caused me to wonder: To what degree can I trust this man’s larger position at a time when the nation is in crisis?”
She’s not only seeking a father figure here, but she also seems desperate for a spanking. She’s putting herself in the central role, not just of the one eliciting the spanking: she’s the trustor, Jack is the beneficiary (but only if he’s worthy…). Human nature is fascinating!