Speaking to reporters in South Carolina on Monday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — who has frequently positioned himself as an ardent ally of President Donald Trump — insisted that he accepts Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. This perspective places Graham at odds with the former president himself, who has continued to insist long after leaving office that Biden’s win was the result of systematic fraud, despite the fact that no legitimate evidence in support of this fraud theory has ever emerged.
Graham commented as follows:
‘I accept the results of the election… 2020 is over to me, I’m ready to march on and hopefully take back the House and the Senate in 2022… I think what we need to do is reform election systems… So I think it’s smart to reform our laws to make sure you are who you are… I think there are a lot of people that feel like bad things happened in the election… But I think President Trump and the Republican Party needs to focus on election reform and the upcoming election.’
Meanwhile, the former president insisted just last week that “the Presidential Election of 2020 will go down as THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY,” which is obviously delusional but represents a central idea that Trump and some of his top political allies have continued to push. Even billions of dollars worth of defamation lawsuits filed by subjects of some of Trump World’s election conspiracy theories haven’t stopped the former president from pushing this nonsense.
As Graham indicated, Republicans across the country have sought to impose new voting restrictions ahead of future elections. Fundamentally, these restrictions answer a problem that does not exist, because no systematic security issues were discovered with the election guidelines that have previously been in place across the country. The reality is that the effects of these restrictions will entail greater difficulty of accessing the ballot box for certain groups. Certain new GOP-backed election restrictions in states including Georgia, Florida, and Iowa have already been met with lawsuits challenging the legality of the Republicans’ moves.
