Lindsey Graham Publicly Embarrassed During Live TV Interview

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Last week, Republicans including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (S.C.) secured an acquittal for President Donald Trump over the charges brought in his impeachment case, which included abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. This weekend on CBS’s Face The Nation, he was right back to stumping for the president with a melodramatic insistence that he’d be investigating the president’s opponents — an aim which sat at the center of the plot that drove Trump’s impeachment in the first place.

He kicked off his appearance on the show by laughing off a ridiculously petty tweet from the president of the United States, who mockingly called the program “DeFace The Nation.” Trump had insisted that Graham should “start up Judiciary,” and in an attempt at explaining Trump’s vague “marching orders,” Graham commented:

‘I think what he’s talking about is oversight of the FISA warrant system that failed. I can promise and the president and your viewers that I’m going to call witnesses about the Horowitz Report. McCabe, Comey, Rosenstein, Yates — how did you miss it so badly? How could you issue four warrants against an American citizen based on information that was unreliable?’

Watch below:

Graham is referring to the surveillance warrants that authorities secured targeting one-time Trump adviser Carter Page, who had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence services. A recent report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz criticized the basis that the Justice Department used for those warrants, and although that does not in the slightest detract from the evidence basis of the Russia investigation — Trump and Graham are jumping at the chance to investigate the president’s opponents. Perhaps former FBI Director James Comey will be Republicans’ new Hillary Clinton.

After the above, Graham melodramatically went on:

‘So what I will do is I will get to the bottom of how the FISA warrant system failed and make sure we reform it so it doesn’t happen again. I think questions about the conflict of interest regarding Hunter Biden in the Ukraine need to be asked. The State Department had warnings and they ignored the conflict of interest. The whistleblower episode needs to be investigated.’

Watch:

If Graham is so concerned about conflicts of interest, then where is his outrage over the business deals that Trump family members are pursuing while Donald remains in office? Where is his outrage about the president literally making money off the presidency through his and his campaign’s repeated stays at Trump properties? The total absence of that outrage suggests that political expedience underlines Graham’s behavior rather than some kind of valiance. His attempt to carry the torch of an investigation into Hunter Biden fulfills Trump’s plot to bribe Ukraine into investigating that same topic.

For his part, Graham is up for re-election this year, but it’s unclear if he’ll be successfully toppled. The Cook Political Report currently rates his race as a “solid” Republican hold — in stark contrast to the three GOP-held seats rated as “toss-ups” and the three additional seats rated as just “leaning” Republican, which is the last stop before toss-up status.