Chris Wallace Exposes Lindsey Graham’s Hypocrisy During Interview

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On Fox News Sunday this weekend, host Chris Wallace — who happened to announce at the end of the broadcast that it was his last with the network and he would not be returning — posed a tough line of questioning to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) regarding whether or not the sweeping tax cuts that then-President Trump signed into law early in his term were actually paid for, as has been claimed. The idea from Republicans who backed the tax cuts was that costs (i.e., government revenue losses) associated with the plan would be covered — but that’s not exactly panned out.

Wallace and Graham discussed this matter in the context of debate surrounding the Build Back Better agenda, as it’s been called, which proposes sweeping financial support from the federal government for initiatives like fighting climate change, improving health care access, and more. Predictably, Republicans have complained about the cost — even as hundreds of billions of dollars get approved for military spending. As Wallace initially put it:

‘In 2017, President Trump [backed] and all Senate Republicans voted for the tax cuts then, that added $2 trillion to the economy. And in fact, you talk about budget gimmicks, it used the same budget gimmick there. For instance, saying that individual tax cuts were going to end in 2025.’

Wallace then shared a clip of White House press secretary Jen Psaki observing that the tax cuts enacted by Republicans in those early days of the Trump administration were not, in fact, “paid for.” The host asked Graham if Psaki “[had] a point,” to which the South Carolina Senator replied as follows:

‘No, not really. I like giving money back to the taxpayer. I don’t like spending more money than we did in World War II, and that’s what we’re doing right now. This bill, Build Back Better, is $5 trillion — it’s not $1.75 [trillion]. It will add $3 trillion to the deficit. When they tell you the bill is paid for, they’re lying.’

Wallace cut in, adding the following:

‘What Jen Psaki is saying and a lot of Democrats are saying is that when [Republicans] passed the 2017 Trump tax cut, that was a lie — it wasn’t paid for.’

Subsequently, Graham added as follows:

‘No, what happens is you can’t go beyond 10 years in terms of the budget window. We voted knowing that cutting taxes we believed would be good. I never said that cutting taxes — I voted for cutting taxes. I’m against expanding the government.’

Graham went on to continue trying to disprove Democratic claims about the cost of the Build Back Better agenda. He never came up with a perceptibly solid answer for whether the Trump tax cuts were actually paid for — instead, he opted for deflection. Check out a portion of Graham’s Sunday morning discussion with Wallace below: