Ep. 2 The Corruption of Lindsey Graham

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November seventeen, twenty sixteen. A week after Donald Trump was elected president. Senator Lindsey Graham went on TV to start sucking For most of the twenty sixteen presidential campaign, Graham had excoriated Trump as a toxic demagogue. But now Graham was changing his tune. He wanted to build a relationship with president-elect.

I’m in the book, Call me if you need me. Graham told Trump through the CNN camera.

Nope. Nope. Nope. I’m sure he’s very busy trying to put together his team, and I’m in the book. Call me if you need me, but don’t worry about Lindsay.

I’ll be here helping where I can. And if I can’t

help Sucking up to a new president was normal. But sucking up to this president would be very different. Already, Trump had indicated that he would make his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a power broker in the new government. That was the kind of thing Kings dictators did. But Graham, when he was asked about it, chose not to quit.

I know people are concerned about the biz dealings of the Trump family and how it relates to the presidency. That’s all fair game, but when it comes to mister Kushner, I’m all for him being able to help president Trump in any fashion the president deems appropriate.

Any fashion the president deems appropriate. Gram wasn’t just endorsing Trump’s arrangement with Kushner. He was signaling that Trump could do as he pleased. This is the corruption of Lindsay Graham presented by the Bulwark podcast. I’m your host, Will Saletan.

Lindsey Graham was entering the second stage of his relationship with Donald Trump. It’s a relationship that many of Graham’s critics regard as a complete sellout. They think Graham cast aside all his previous criticisms of Trump and became Trump’s chief apologist for nothing. But that’s not true. Graham actually had very strong beliefs and he fought for them intensely, including with Trump.

The story of Lindsey Graham is not that a United States senator submitted to an authoritarian for nothing. The truth is much more disturbing. The real story is that a senator who did have a backbone and did care about important issues. Submitted to an authoritarian anyway. You don’t have to be an empty suit to become part of this kind of evil.

And that is what should truly worry all of us. What Graham cared about most of all was national security and foreign policy, and that particular interest gave Trump enormous leverage over him because the president had almost total control of those issues. Graham was an internationalist, but Trump was an isolationist. Graham wanted to keep troops in Syria, He wanted to support NATO and stand up to Russia. Persuading Trump on those issues would be a huge undertaking and a constant struggle.

This was one of the most striking things I found when I looked closely at Graham’s evolving relationship with Trump. In the moments when RAM was most fiercely defending Trump’s abuse of power. He was simultaneously lobbying Trump, to adopt or at least not to abandon aggressive foreign policies. At times, Graham Alba admitted that he viewed this as transaction. Here’s grandma and meet the press a year after Trump became president.

A lot of your friends have been asking me that going, hey, ask the senator. Why he’s suddenly cozying up to president Trump? What would you say to them?

Because he’s president of the United States. He’s gonna make a decision about immigration. I’ve been working on for a decade. He’s president of the United States going to make a decision about North Korea, which is one of the biggest threats to the world at large. He’s going to decide whether outstand the Iranian agreement.

I’ve enjoyed

Graham wanted the United States to stand up to tyrants overseas. And the bitter irony is that to achieve that, he was willing to compromise the rule of law in our own country. There’s also a second irony in this story, and it played an important role in Trump’s consolidation of power. Gram was one of many Republican politicians who at first seemed too sensible to give in to Trump. But they did give in because Paradoxically, they fell for Trump’s buffoonery.

You may have heard it said in a cynical way that American democracy survive Trump’s presidency because unlike successful autocrats in other countries, he was too stupid and too self absorbed to gain absolute power. That might be true, but Trump’s stupidity was actually an asset, introducing leaders of his party. Gram and many of his colleagues knew Trump was a brute, but they also knew he was an idiot. And that gave them a false sense of security. They thought he was too clumsy to endanger American democracy.

The Republican Big Wigs who visited the president-elect at Trump Tower after the twenty sixteen election, and later paid their respects to him at the White House. They didn’t think they were Trump’s pawns. They thought they were manipulating him, and that illusion of control blinded them to the force he gradually exerted over them. In the early days of twenty seventeen, Gram worked his way into what he called Trump’s orbit. He flattered the incoming president, and totally abased himself Here’s Graham on Fox News, a week before Trump took office.

I know I got one percent. Donald, you beat me like a drum. You’re the president. I’m a senator. I wanna help you.

Let it go. Let’s move on. And we’re gonna make America great again.

Backstage, Graham began to build a relationship with Kushner. By March, Graham was launching with Trump, exchanging jokes and offering advice on Iran and North Korea. Soon their courtship moved on to dinners, long phone calls, and eventually golf. From Graham’s point of view, the courtship was working. In foreign policy, Trump became more assertive.

But domestically, it was a very different story. Trump was incorrigible. He refused to accept American intelligence findings that Russia had interfered in the twenty sixteen election on his behalf. In fact, he claimed falsely that millions of people had voted against him illegally. He also falsely accused president Barack Obama of having wiretapped him in Trump Tower.

He called the press the enemy of the people and he reaffirmed his support for torture. Graham knew that all of this was wrong, but he didn’t wanna antagonist Trump. So he tried to ignore Trump’s outrageous statements. When Graham was forced by the press to address those statements, he pulled his punches. And he began to rationalize some of Trump’s twisted ideas.

He said the press really was acting like an opposition party. He said it was up to Trump whether to apologize, to Obama, his false accusation about wiretapping. And Graham began to make his peace with one of Trump’s most pernicious ideas. Barring Muslim travelers from the United States. In December twenty fifteen, when Trump first proposed that idea, Graham denounced it.

Then in the summer of twenty sixteen, Trump modified his language to hide the bigotry. Instead of explicitly banning Muslims. The new version of the ban would apply to quote areas of the world where there’s a proven history of terrorism. At that time, in twenty sixteen, Graham wasn’t fooled. Trump was still making explicitly anti Muslim statements, so Graham held firm against the ban.

But then, Trump won the election. He became president and he announced that he would implement essentially the same idea. A travel ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. And this time, Graham went along with the idea. He said it was okay because the ban also applied to Christians from those countries.

Ignoring the fact that Trump, while announcing the ban, had simultaneously promised to make it easier for Christian. Not Muslims to come to the United States. Graham said the courts should butt out and let the president do as he pleased.

Fact, this does go to the Supreme Court?

Most likely. I think the president has a lot of discretion as he hears, she should. When it comes to entry into the country, regarding national security. The whole idea of the ninth circuit with second guess as national security judgment is a nonstarter, and I don’t That

was in February.

In court and his clearly

Three months later, on May ninth, Trump crossed another red line. He fired FBI Direct James Comey. Trump’s firing of Comey was technically legal, but it was also authoritarian. The FBI had been investigating relationships between the Russian government and the twenty sixteen Trump campaign. Trump had just fired the man in charge of that investigation.

It was the kind of thing that happened all the time in authoritarian countries. Now it was happening in the United States. The president was shielding himself from legal accountability. He was directly attacking the rule of law. At first, Trump pretended that the firing had nothing to do with the Russia investigation.

He tried to blame it on a recommendation from the just department. But it turned out that Trump had orchestrated the recommendation as a cover story. On May eleventh, in an interview with NBC News, Trump blurted out the truth.

He made a recommendation. But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire, call me. Knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election

A few days after that incident. The New York Times revealed that Trump had been trying to corrupt Comey for months. And that Comey had documented Trump’s pressure campaign in contemporaneous memos. One of the memos described a meeting, at which Trump had asked Comey to drop the FBI’s investigation of Mike Flynn, who at that time was Trump’s national security adviser. For lying to the FBI, about back channel phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

In which they talked about lifting American sanctions on Russia. Graham knew all of this was corrupt. If you go back and watch his interviews during this time, you’ll see him basically acknowledging that Trump had done everything he was accused of. But by this point, Graham was invested in Trump. In foreign policy, Graham was getting exactly what he wanted.

He didn’t want to lose that. So he looked for a way to defend the president. And for Graham, there was an obvious way to help. When he was younger, Graham had worked as a defense attorney in the military. So, basically, he became in effect, one of Trump’s lawyers.

Here’s Graham in an interview with CBS News on June eighth, a month after Trump fired Comey.

Senator, is it okay for the president of

the United States to invite the FBI director for

a private dinner. Ask him does he want his job and then say to him, I your loyalty. Is that okay to do?

No. I have half of what Trump does is not okay. If you’re trying to convict him for being bulling a chime shop, crude, and rude, you’d win. I mean, you know, no. This is not a problem.

Trouble you. Doesn’t that trouble you? And and I think that

Lot of a stuff troubles me, but it’s not a crime.

Yeah. The question is

That was Graham’s main talking point. It’s not a crime. And this by the way was a complete departure from the way Graham had talked about Trump a year or two earlier. In twenty fifteen, Graham had focused correctly on Trump’s character. He had explained that Trump was fundamentally depraved, and this was really important because Trump’s depravity was what drove him to heinous ideas like torture and banning Muslims.

But now that Graham was trying protect Trump and keep him in office, Graham abandoned that focus on character. Instead, he focused on each particular thing Trump had said or done. And he asked only one question. Could these acts by the president be construed as technically legal? Here’s Graham on June fifteenth twenty seventeen.

He’s talking to Brian Kilmeade on Fox News radio About Trump’s pressure on Comey to drop the FBI investigation of Flynn. Kilmeade starts this part of the conversation. Talking about whether Trump applied similar pressure to other government officials. Michael Rogers, and they’re gonna ask him if the president did pull them aside and say, listen. He ease up on the Russian probe.

There’s nothing there.

Well, you know, if I had asked him, you know, what did did they try to in influence anyway, the bottom line here is, I think the whole thing with Comey and and the president was about Mike Flynn. He didn’t say stop the rush investigation. He said, you know, could you go easy on Mike Flynn? The guy just got fired and the president likes Mike Flynn. You know, it’s and of appropriate for him to do that, but there’s no belief in my mind.

He was trying to stop an investigation illegally. I mean, you know, you could fire anybody when to fire for for any reason.

Listen to how hard Graham is straining to excuse Trump. Trump had literally asked Comey, to stop investigating Flynn’s conversations with the Russians. And what does Graham say about that? He says Trump wasn’t, quote, trying to stop the investigation illegally. The obvious corruption of what Trump did doesn’t matter to Graham.

The only thing that matters to him is the strict letter of the law. And did you catch that part at the end where Graham says Trump could fire anybody he wants to for any reason? That’s the beginning. Of what would become over time, Graham’s all out embrace of authoritarianism.

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One of the things that happens when a political party starts to become authoritarian or when a whole country starts to become authoritarian, is a rewriting of history. A lot of people who used to be willing to speak the truth about the emerging autocrat before he came to power aren’t willing to do that anymore. They want to erase or at least clean up the bad things they used to say about him. And a lot of politicians who previously drew lines of principle and said they would never cross those lines or said the authoritarian would never cross those lines? They have to adjust their promises when the authoritarian does cross those lines.

To borrow a term from sports, what these politicians start to do is move the goalposts. When Donald Trump fired Jim Comey and Lindsey Graham decided to defend Trump anyway, Gram started to move a lot of goalposts. The first thing Graham did was completely rewrite his portrayal of Comey. Comey certainly had flaws, but anyone who knew him knew that he was almost unfailingly honest. And Graham used to acknowledge that.

But as soon as Trump fired Comey, and Graham found out that Comey had written memos About Trump’s efforts to corrupt him, Graham turned against Comey and portrayed him as a bitter lying partisan hack. That’s what you do. When you’re covering for an authoritarian. Anyone who stands up to the president and tries to expose his crimes has to be attacked and destroyed Gram also had a personal standard that he had articulated for the FBI’s Russia investigation. Here’s how he put it in March of twenty seventeen.

Two months before Comey was fired.

We should make sure the FBI if they are investigating Trump and I don’t have any evidence of them should be able to do it without hesitation or fear.

Without hesitation or fear. Once Comey’s memos became public, it was clear that Trump had crossed that line. He had pressured Comey for personal loyalty. He had asked him to drop part of the FBI’s investigation. And then, when Comey ignored him and continued the investigation, Trump had fired the guy.

It was obvious that Trump was trying to instill hesitation and fear. So Graham dropped that standard. He said it was fine that Trump had fired Comey because, technically, Graham pointed out, firing one man wouldn’t rarely stop the investigation. Graham also changed his position on Flynn’s phone calls with the Russian ambassador. Originally, Graham had said was wrong for Flynn to talk to the ambassador about lifting sanctions on Russia.

Because that message undercut the sanctions, and it basically rewarded Russia. Interfering in our election to install a president who was friendly to Russia. But after it came out that Trump had tried to pressure Comey to drop the litigation of Flynn, Graham changed his tune. He said it was fine for Flynn to talk to the Russians about lifting the sanctions. One of the trickiest things Graham had to rewrite was his definition of collusion.

All along, he had said there was no evidence of Trump or the Trump campaign colluding with the Russians. But then, on July eighth twenty seventeen, The New York Times revealed what became known as the Trump Tower meeting. It had taken place on June ninth twenty sixteen. In the middle of the presidential campaign. In that meeting, three top officials in Trump’s campaign, his son Don Junior, his son-in-law Kushner, and his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had sat down with a Russian lawyer who was closely connected to the Kremlin.

In an email chain to set up the meeting, an intermediary who was working with the Russian side, had offered, quote, to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary as, quote, part of Russia and its government’s support for mister Trump, unquote. Those were the exact words in the email. And in reply, Don junior had written quote, if it’s what you say, I love it. This was open and shut collusion. And Trump had tried to cover it up.

On July thirty first twenty seventeen, the Washington Post reported that the president in an attempt to play down the meeting had personally dictated a misleading public statement that concealed the Russian offer. So, what did Graham do when he realized that the Trump campaign had tried to collude with the Russians? And that Trump had tried to cover it up, he changed his definition of collusion. He said it wasn’t really collusion unless it directly involved quote, Russian intelligence services. And he dismissed the Russian emissaries who had come to Trump Tower as, quote, these kind of weird Russians.

Okay. Well, the but the interaction in Trump Tower with these kind of weird Russians. You know, they’re talking year grade, summer would be better. I haven’t seen anything come from that, but here’s what I have seen. I’ve seen absolutely no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign, any Russian intelligence service, I have

Let’s be honest. Lindsay Graham was never going to admit. That anyone in the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians. No matter what happened, up to and including an email from Don Junior, accepting an offer literally on behalf of the Russian government and its support for Mr. Trump was going to find some way to move the goalposts.

And Graham was never going to admit that he was doing this. Part of moving your goalpost, to serve an authoritarian is that you erase the old goalposts. You pretend they were never there.

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The biggest thing Lindsay Graham had to erase when he decided to become Donald Trump’s best buddy was all the bad things he had said about Trump in twenty fifteen and early twenty sixteen. Remember, in those days, Graham hadn’t just criticized Trump’s behavior or Trump’s ideas. He had indicted the man’s character He had explained why Trump was fundamentally dangerous. Now that Graham was trying to charm, appease, and protect Trump, that indictment was an embarrassment. Graham needed to make it go away.

Gram couldn’t exactly erase his words, but there was another way to expunge them. He could argue that voters by electing Trump, had rejected and discredited Graham’s criticisms of Trump. In other words, the authoritarian Trump had been cleansed by democracy itself. Graham had begun to form this idea in twenty sixteen. Now, he fully embraced it.

At a senate hearing, on March twentieth twenty seventeen, two weeks after his first lunch with the president. Graham joked that if he had known Trump was going to be president. And if you — He never would

have president — this is a great plan to get a Trump nominee on the court, then you had to believe Trump was gonna win to begin with. I didn’t believe that. Obviously, I didn’t believe that. Saying all the things I said, followed closely by Ben. But apparently, what I said didn’t matter, and that’s okay with me.

The American people chose Donald Trump And here’s what I can say about humanity.

That’s a United States senator declaring and happily accepting that what he had said about Trump in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen didn’t matter. Here’s Graham several months later, in December twenty seventeen. Desone Yeah.

I said everything I saw is a xenophobic race baiting religious bigot. I ran out of adjectives. Well, the American people spoke. They rejected my analysis, and he is now my president. I worked with president Obama where I could, with president Bush, even though

a race baiting religious bigot. Graham had been absolutely right about Trump. And now, two years later, Gram was renouncing all of that. He was writing it off as just a bunch of adjectives thrown out during a political campaign. But Graham couldn’t change the fact that this was who Trump was.

Tow the end of twenty seventeen, nearly a year into his presidency, Trump was still talking and acting like a race baiting religious bigot. He was retweeting anti Muslim videos he was still disputing President Obama’s birth certificate. But now, when Graham was asked on CNN, about this ongoing behavior.

Multiple reports coming out about what he what he is talking about in private again, about the excess Hollywood tape and about the debunk conspiracy theory about where president president Obama’s birthplace. The fact that he’s going back there right now in the midst of everything you and I discussed. Does that concern you at this point?

You know what concerns me about the American press is this endless endlessed attempt to label the guy as some kind of kook, not fit to be president. He did win, by the way. He beat

I’m not leaving him listening. You know what’s crazy about that answer from Graham? The words he used there, cuck, not fit to be president, Those were Graham’s own words. Those were the words he had used in early twenty sixteen, describing Trump.

I’m not Here’s the honor to get into the

mind of Donald Trump because I don’t think there’s a whole lot of space there.

I think he’s a cool

I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office.

That’s how fully Lindsey Graham had transformed himself. In just a year and a half. He no longer recognized his own words. Coming up next time on the corruption of Lindsey Graham, senate Republicans realize they’re no longer just humoring Trump. They’re afraid of him, and Graham.

Here’s what I tell you, frienders.

If you feel good doing it, do it.

The corruption of Lindsey Graham was reported and written by me Will Saletan. Katie Cooper is the producer. With audio engineering editing and sound design by Jason Brown. Thank you to my editors, Jonathan Last Last and Adam Kiper, and to Charlie Sykes.

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