Harold Titus's Blog, page 2
May 1, 2022
Amoralists -- Jim Jordan -- Part One -- Be on the Offense
Jordan was born and raised in Champaign County, Ohio, the son of Shirley and John Jordan. He attended and wrestled for Graham High School, graduating in 1982. He won state championships all four years he was in high school and compiled a 156–1 win–loss record.
He then enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he became a two-time NCAA Division I wrestling champion. Jordan won the 1985 and 1986 NCAA championship matches in the 134-pound (61 kg) weight class. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1986. He lost the 126–137-pound (57–62 kg) featherweight semifinal match at the 1988 US Olympic wrestling trials and failed to make the Olympic team.
Jordan earned a master’s degree in education from Ohio State University and a Juris Doctor from the Capital University Law School. In a 2018 interview, Jordan said he never took the bar examination.
Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach with Ohio State University’s wrestling program from 1987 to 1995.
…
Jordan was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in November 1994 and represented the 85th Ohio House district for three terms.
In 2000, Jordan was elected to the Ohio Senate over independent candidate Jack Kaffenberger with 88% of the vote. In 2004, Jordan defeated Kaffenberger again, with 79% of the vote.
Jordan represents Ohio's 4th congressional district. He won the Republican primary for the 4th district in 2006 after 26-year incumbent Mike Oxley announced his retirement. Jordan defeated Democratic nominee Rick Siferd in the general election with 60% of the vote (Jim 2-3).
Jordan described himself as one of the most conservative legislators in the Ohio Legislature — and surely will chart a rightward course in Congress. When evaluating legislation, he says he will ask himself, "Will this decision benefit families?"
He introduced numerous anti-abortion bills as a state legislator and says he will strongly support federal efforts to ban abortion and same-sex marriage.
Jordan, though, will not be a reflexive vote for the leadership, particularly if he thinks GOP fiscal policy does not cut taxes and spending enough. Endorsed by the free-market-oriented Club for Growth, Jordan supports permanently extending the Bush administration tax cuts.
On health care issues, Jordan supports expanding health savings accounts. On energy policy, he supports oil drilling and streamlining the process to build new refineries.
Still, partisan enmity is not his style. He said he is a "happy warrior . . . the guy who is fighting for the things I believe in and the things that I think make this country special — but do it with a smile" (CQ Staff 1).
Jordan was reelected in 2008, defeating Democratic nominee Mike Carroll with 65% of the vote. In 2010, he was again reelected, defeating Democrat Doug Litt and Libertarian Donald Kissick with 71% of the vote. Jordan was reelected in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 (Jim 2-4).
[Jordan began his rise through Republican ranks in the House when he was elected chair of the Republican Study Committee in December 2010. Jordan announced that] under his leadership, the group will "fight for conservative principles, develop policy and be a forum for common sense solutions and ideas."
"It is important that the new Congress remembers the message the American people sent on election day," Jordan said in a press release that announced his selection. "People want Congress to stop the out-of-control spending, reverse the expansion of government into people's personal lives, and put America back on a fiscally-responsible track."
To win the position, Jordan beat a challenge from Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, who accused him of being a "wing man" for House GOP Leader John Boehner. Jordan and Boehner represent adjacent Ohio congressional districts.
As he geared up to run for the post, Jordan began appearing more regularly on conservative radio and television shows. On Tuesday, he told radio host Laura Ingraham that President Barack Obama was “unpresidential for attacking Republicans at a press conference to defend his tax compromise (Eaton “Selected” 1).
During the U.S. government shutdown of 2013, he was considered the committee's most powerful member. That group was the primary proponent and executor of the Republican congressional strategy to bring about a government shutdown in order to force changes in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare (Jim 5).
[The Republican Party having regained control of the House as a result of the 2014 midterm election] a conservative group of nine Congress members including Champaign County GOP Rep. Jim Jordan announced Monday that they'll start a new organization called the House Freedom Caucus "to advance an agenda of limited constitutional government" in Congress.
According to a statement released by Jordan's office, the group's mission will be to give "a voice to countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them. We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution, and the rule of law and policies that promote liberty, safety and prosperity of all Americans" (Eaton “Co-Found” 1).
According to a Roll Call account confirmed by Jordan's office, the new group selected Jordan as its chairman at a Tuesday night Capitol Hill meeting. He was unopposed.
In an interview last week, Jordan told Northeast Ohio Media Group the new organization's immediate priority will be to lobby the U.S. Senate to adopt a House-passed bill that defunds President Obama's November actions to give work permits to millions of immigrants who are in the United States illegally and to temporarily halt some deportations.
He said the new group will also come up with legislation to replace Obamacare, which conservatives hope will be gutted by an upcoming Supreme Court case (Eaton “Official” 1).
“We only have 13 days left,” Jordan, R-Urbana, 4th District, said [at a Sidney, Ohio, VFW Shelby County Liberty Group political rally Oct. 26] in referring to the Nov. 8 [2016] presidential election. Jordan left no doubt in touting Republican candidate Donald Trump as the best choice and asked those in attendance to urge others to vote likewise.
“It’s down to two people. It’s going to be Trump or (Democrat Hillary) Clinton. There’s just one clear choice. We all know what he’s said. And some of it has been bad, but he’s still the best choice we have,” Jordan said.
The Congressman said the current tax policy, foreign policies and Affordable Care Act fallout is in disarray. He said political wrangling has allowed Clinton to dodge prosecution regarding security issues with her email.
“There is a double standard. There is one set of rules for ‘we the people’; and another set of rules for those who are connected in Washington.”
…
“If Clinton gets elected, the Justice Department will remain political. If Trump gets elected, the Justice Department will become focused on justice.”
Jordan spoke of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi where four people were killed. He told of how the lack of military response and Clinton’s involvement in creating “a spin” on the story due to a presidential election being just 56 days away. He claims that alone should be cause for her disqualification as a presidential candidate.
…
Jordan was quizzed on the uneven media coverage of the campaign. He said, “The liberal media is supposed to be the referee when it comes to candidates, not the cheerleaders. I’ve never seen it this blatant.”
…
Jordan was asked to list three things he would support that Trump intends to make happen in Washington. Choosing five items, he said eliminating Obamacare, fixing border security, improving tax laws, chose proper Supreme Court Justices and improving veteran’s services.(Painter 1-2).
[Excerpts from an interview conducted by Michael Kirk on Frontline June 16, 2020]
He’s just tough. I mean, he’s tough. I remember, I typically don’t get into many details of conversation I have with the president, but one time I was talking with the president. I said: “Mr. President, I know what I have to live through. I know the attacks I get, the lies that get told about me.” And I said, “You get it a thousand times worse, and you get it every second of every day.” And he just said: “Yeah, Jim, but what are you going to do? You’ve just got to keep fighting.”
And so it’s just this rugged toughness that he has, that he’s able to keep fighting through it and trying to get done what he told the American people he was going to do. …
… this president is as real as it gets. I mean, I think that’s why so many Americans appreciate him. That’s why these rallies … They’re amazing. They’re truly amazing. … people appreciate a fighter, and they appreciate someone that they think is fighting for them.
…
… I have business guys in our district and others in our district who have been supporters of me in the various campaigns I’ve been in over the years, and they really appreciate the president. They appreciate his straightforwardness, his frankness and his toughness. And some of them were for the president as soon as he announced; it was after the, you know, after he secured the nomination. So they wanted someone who’s going to shake this town up, and that’s exactly who they got.
You had that Tea Party wave that was building, that sort of culminated in 2010, taking back the House, then the frustration with us not getting some things done that we told the American people we were going to do relative to repealing Obamacare, relative to certain spending issues, relative to holding people accountable for the scandals in the Obama administration, like Lois Lerner targeting the conservatives and Tea Party members around the country. All that builds, and along comes this guy who says he’s going to take it all on, take on the swamp.
And it’s like, that movement and that momentum, I think, coalesced behind President Trump and was a big reason why he won, because we all saw someone in him that, you know what, this guy is going to change this town. He is going to fight against and do the things that we thought we were going to get down in ’10, ’11, ’12, ’13, ’14, in those era—in those years. He’s going to have a chance to get that done, and that’s why I think people supported him.
… as he gets in office, you see how, in ’17, you saw this town when it was the whole Russian collusion narrative, which was a bunch of baloney, but every Democrat said, “Oh, we need a special counsel,” and all the press said, “We need a special counsel,” and a bunch of Republicans said, “We need a special counsel,” and this whole move to go after the president based on something that we now know was completely bogus. So you just—you just saw it all. And yet you saw him persevere through it all. Again, I’ve said it several times, but that’s what I really appreciate about the guy.
…
… it’s this can-do attitude that he has. You know, you think about what happened during that time. We still got taxes cut, still addressed regulations, still did the embassy in Jerusalem, still did the pulling out of the Iran deal, still did all those things he told the American people he was going to do. He just did his job, and he did it well. And I think that’s the way you have to deal with all these kind of things, I think in any business, but certainly in this business.
When you’re getting attacked from the press on things that aren’t true, you’ve just got to stay focused on doing what you told the people you were going to get done. And he did that. And there’s some—I think that’s just the only way you can deal with it. And he certainly did.
…
… I always say the best way is to be on the offense. That’s how you score points; that’s how you win. And the president has that mindset, that he’s going to be on the offense.
In the example you gave, when it’s dealing with the press in these press scrums on, when he’s getting ready to get on Marine One, on the White House lawn, he’s on the offense. And I like it. I really do. I think it’s the proper mindset. I think it’s a mindset that’s consistent with America. It’s an American mindset, and it’s a mindset that I think the American people appreciate as well (Kirk 2-5).
One of the House’s most conservative lawmakers has announced his bid for Republican House Speaker: Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, said Thursday that he will join the race to replace House Speaker Paul Ryan — a campaign that might complicate the Republican speakership fight in the months ahead.
“President Trump has taken bold action on behalf of the American people,” Jordan said in a statement. “Congress has not held up its end of the deal, but we can change that.”
Ryan, who is not running for reelection, says he plans to keep his leadership post until he retires in January, but top House Republicans are already trying to position themselves as his heir apparent.
Jordan, a close ally of President Trump, is one of the loudest conservative voices against the FBI’s investigation into Russian election meddling and backed a resolution to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The Ohio Republican has been under intense scrutiny in recent months after several former Ohio State wrestlers accused Jordan of turning a blind eye to rampant sexual abuse at the university while he was an assistant wrestling coach there in the late 1980s — allegations that Jordan has vehemently denied.
Jordan has been floating a leadership run for some time, but even his conservative colleagues admit that as one of the most right-wing members of the party, it’s unlikely Jordan has enough support in the House to win the speakership altogether. But he does have the votes to sway who the speaker is (Golshan 1-2).
Works cited:
CQ Staff. “Rep.-Elect Jim Jordan (R—Ohio).” New York Times, November 8, 2006. Net. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim...
Eaton, Sabrina. “It's Official: Rep. Jim Jordan Now Chairs the House Freedom Caucus.” clevelend.com, February 11, 2015. Net. https://web.archive.org/web/201902161...
Eaton, Sabrina. “Rep. Jim Jordan Selected To Chair Republican Study Committee.” cleveland.com, December 8, 2010. Net. https://www.cleveland.com/open/2010/1...
Eaton, Sabrina. “Rep. Jim Jordan To co-found New GOP "House Freedom Caucus." cleveland.com, January 26, 2015. Net. https://www.cleveland.com/open/2015/0...
Golshan, Tara. “Trump Ally and Super-Conservative Jim Jordan Is Running for House Speaker.” Vox, July 26, 2018. Net. https://www.vox.com/2018/7/26/1761717...
“Jim Jordan (American Politician).” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jor...
Kirk, Michael. “Jim Jordan.” Frontline, June 16, 2020. Net. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/in...
Painter, Jim. “Presidential Campaign Draws to a Close.” Sydney Daily News, October 27, 2016. Net. https://www.sidneydailynews.com/news/...
He then enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he became a two-time NCAA Division I wrestling champion. Jordan won the 1985 and 1986 NCAA championship matches in the 134-pound (61 kg) weight class. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1986. He lost the 126–137-pound (57–62 kg) featherweight semifinal match at the 1988 US Olympic wrestling trials and failed to make the Olympic team.
Jordan earned a master’s degree in education from Ohio State University and a Juris Doctor from the Capital University Law School. In a 2018 interview, Jordan said he never took the bar examination.
Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach with Ohio State University’s wrestling program from 1987 to 1995.
…
Jordan was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in November 1994 and represented the 85th Ohio House district for three terms.
In 2000, Jordan was elected to the Ohio Senate over independent candidate Jack Kaffenberger with 88% of the vote. In 2004, Jordan defeated Kaffenberger again, with 79% of the vote.
Jordan represents Ohio's 4th congressional district. He won the Republican primary for the 4th district in 2006 after 26-year incumbent Mike Oxley announced his retirement. Jordan defeated Democratic nominee Rick Siferd in the general election with 60% of the vote (Jim 2-3).
Jordan described himself as one of the most conservative legislators in the Ohio Legislature — and surely will chart a rightward course in Congress. When evaluating legislation, he says he will ask himself, "Will this decision benefit families?"
He introduced numerous anti-abortion bills as a state legislator and says he will strongly support federal efforts to ban abortion and same-sex marriage.
Jordan, though, will not be a reflexive vote for the leadership, particularly if he thinks GOP fiscal policy does not cut taxes and spending enough. Endorsed by the free-market-oriented Club for Growth, Jordan supports permanently extending the Bush administration tax cuts.
On health care issues, Jordan supports expanding health savings accounts. On energy policy, he supports oil drilling and streamlining the process to build new refineries.
Still, partisan enmity is not his style. He said he is a "happy warrior . . . the guy who is fighting for the things I believe in and the things that I think make this country special — but do it with a smile" (CQ Staff 1).
Jordan was reelected in 2008, defeating Democratic nominee Mike Carroll with 65% of the vote. In 2010, he was again reelected, defeating Democrat Doug Litt and Libertarian Donald Kissick with 71% of the vote. Jordan was reelected in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 (Jim 2-4).
[Jordan began his rise through Republican ranks in the House when he was elected chair of the Republican Study Committee in December 2010. Jordan announced that] under his leadership, the group will "fight for conservative principles, develop policy and be a forum for common sense solutions and ideas."
"It is important that the new Congress remembers the message the American people sent on election day," Jordan said in a press release that announced his selection. "People want Congress to stop the out-of-control spending, reverse the expansion of government into people's personal lives, and put America back on a fiscally-responsible track."
To win the position, Jordan beat a challenge from Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, who accused him of being a "wing man" for House GOP Leader John Boehner. Jordan and Boehner represent adjacent Ohio congressional districts.
As he geared up to run for the post, Jordan began appearing more regularly on conservative radio and television shows. On Tuesday, he told radio host Laura Ingraham that President Barack Obama was “unpresidential for attacking Republicans at a press conference to defend his tax compromise (Eaton “Selected” 1).
During the U.S. government shutdown of 2013, he was considered the committee's most powerful member. That group was the primary proponent and executor of the Republican congressional strategy to bring about a government shutdown in order to force changes in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare (Jim 5).
[The Republican Party having regained control of the House as a result of the 2014 midterm election] a conservative group of nine Congress members including Champaign County GOP Rep. Jim Jordan announced Monday that they'll start a new organization called the House Freedom Caucus "to advance an agenda of limited constitutional government" in Congress.
According to a statement released by Jordan's office, the group's mission will be to give "a voice to countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them. We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution, and the rule of law and policies that promote liberty, safety and prosperity of all Americans" (Eaton “Co-Found” 1).
According to a Roll Call account confirmed by Jordan's office, the new group selected Jordan as its chairman at a Tuesday night Capitol Hill meeting. He was unopposed.
In an interview last week, Jordan told Northeast Ohio Media Group the new organization's immediate priority will be to lobby the U.S. Senate to adopt a House-passed bill that defunds President Obama's November actions to give work permits to millions of immigrants who are in the United States illegally and to temporarily halt some deportations.
He said the new group will also come up with legislation to replace Obamacare, which conservatives hope will be gutted by an upcoming Supreme Court case (Eaton “Official” 1).
“We only have 13 days left,” Jordan, R-Urbana, 4th District, said [at a Sidney, Ohio, VFW Shelby County Liberty Group political rally Oct. 26] in referring to the Nov. 8 [2016] presidential election. Jordan left no doubt in touting Republican candidate Donald Trump as the best choice and asked those in attendance to urge others to vote likewise.
“It’s down to two people. It’s going to be Trump or (Democrat Hillary) Clinton. There’s just one clear choice. We all know what he’s said. And some of it has been bad, but he’s still the best choice we have,” Jordan said.
The Congressman said the current tax policy, foreign policies and Affordable Care Act fallout is in disarray. He said political wrangling has allowed Clinton to dodge prosecution regarding security issues with her email.
“There is a double standard. There is one set of rules for ‘we the people’; and another set of rules for those who are connected in Washington.”
…
“If Clinton gets elected, the Justice Department will remain political. If Trump gets elected, the Justice Department will become focused on justice.”
Jordan spoke of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi where four people were killed. He told of how the lack of military response and Clinton’s involvement in creating “a spin” on the story due to a presidential election being just 56 days away. He claims that alone should be cause for her disqualification as a presidential candidate.
…
Jordan was quizzed on the uneven media coverage of the campaign. He said, “The liberal media is supposed to be the referee when it comes to candidates, not the cheerleaders. I’ve never seen it this blatant.”
…
Jordan was asked to list three things he would support that Trump intends to make happen in Washington. Choosing five items, he said eliminating Obamacare, fixing border security, improving tax laws, chose proper Supreme Court Justices and improving veteran’s services.(Painter 1-2).
[Excerpts from an interview conducted by Michael Kirk on Frontline June 16, 2020]
He’s just tough. I mean, he’s tough. I remember, I typically don’t get into many details of conversation I have with the president, but one time I was talking with the president. I said: “Mr. President, I know what I have to live through. I know the attacks I get, the lies that get told about me.” And I said, “You get it a thousand times worse, and you get it every second of every day.” And he just said: “Yeah, Jim, but what are you going to do? You’ve just got to keep fighting.”
And so it’s just this rugged toughness that he has, that he’s able to keep fighting through it and trying to get done what he told the American people he was going to do. …
… this president is as real as it gets. I mean, I think that’s why so many Americans appreciate him. That’s why these rallies … They’re amazing. They’re truly amazing. … people appreciate a fighter, and they appreciate someone that they think is fighting for them.
…
… I have business guys in our district and others in our district who have been supporters of me in the various campaigns I’ve been in over the years, and they really appreciate the president. They appreciate his straightforwardness, his frankness and his toughness. And some of them were for the president as soon as he announced; it was after the, you know, after he secured the nomination. So they wanted someone who’s going to shake this town up, and that’s exactly who they got.
You had that Tea Party wave that was building, that sort of culminated in 2010, taking back the House, then the frustration with us not getting some things done that we told the American people we were going to do relative to repealing Obamacare, relative to certain spending issues, relative to holding people accountable for the scandals in the Obama administration, like Lois Lerner targeting the conservatives and Tea Party members around the country. All that builds, and along comes this guy who says he’s going to take it all on, take on the swamp.
And it’s like, that movement and that momentum, I think, coalesced behind President Trump and was a big reason why he won, because we all saw someone in him that, you know what, this guy is going to change this town. He is going to fight against and do the things that we thought we were going to get down in ’10, ’11, ’12, ’13, ’14, in those era—in those years. He’s going to have a chance to get that done, and that’s why I think people supported him.
… as he gets in office, you see how, in ’17, you saw this town when it was the whole Russian collusion narrative, which was a bunch of baloney, but every Democrat said, “Oh, we need a special counsel,” and all the press said, “We need a special counsel,” and a bunch of Republicans said, “We need a special counsel,” and this whole move to go after the president based on something that we now know was completely bogus. So you just—you just saw it all. And yet you saw him persevere through it all. Again, I’ve said it several times, but that’s what I really appreciate about the guy.
…
… it’s this can-do attitude that he has. You know, you think about what happened during that time. We still got taxes cut, still addressed regulations, still did the embassy in Jerusalem, still did the pulling out of the Iran deal, still did all those things he told the American people he was going to do. He just did his job, and he did it well. And I think that’s the way you have to deal with all these kind of things, I think in any business, but certainly in this business.
When you’re getting attacked from the press on things that aren’t true, you’ve just got to stay focused on doing what you told the people you were going to get done. And he did that. And there’s some—I think that’s just the only way you can deal with it. And he certainly did.
…
… I always say the best way is to be on the offense. That’s how you score points; that’s how you win. And the president has that mindset, that he’s going to be on the offense.
In the example you gave, when it’s dealing with the press in these press scrums on, when he’s getting ready to get on Marine One, on the White House lawn, he’s on the offense. And I like it. I really do. I think it’s the proper mindset. I think it’s a mindset that’s consistent with America. It’s an American mindset, and it’s a mindset that I think the American people appreciate as well (Kirk 2-5).
One of the House’s most conservative lawmakers has announced his bid for Republican House Speaker: Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, said Thursday that he will join the race to replace House Speaker Paul Ryan — a campaign that might complicate the Republican speakership fight in the months ahead.
“President Trump has taken bold action on behalf of the American people,” Jordan said in a statement. “Congress has not held up its end of the deal, but we can change that.”
Ryan, who is not running for reelection, says he plans to keep his leadership post until he retires in January, but top House Republicans are already trying to position themselves as his heir apparent.
Jordan, a close ally of President Trump, is one of the loudest conservative voices against the FBI’s investigation into Russian election meddling and backed a resolution to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The Ohio Republican has been under intense scrutiny in recent months after several former Ohio State wrestlers accused Jordan of turning a blind eye to rampant sexual abuse at the university while he was an assistant wrestling coach there in the late 1980s — allegations that Jordan has vehemently denied.
Jordan has been floating a leadership run for some time, but even his conservative colleagues admit that as one of the most right-wing members of the party, it’s unlikely Jordan has enough support in the House to win the speakership altogether. But he does have the votes to sway who the speaker is (Golshan 1-2).
Works cited:
CQ Staff. “Rep.-Elect Jim Jordan (R—Ohio).” New York Times, November 8, 2006. Net. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytim...
Eaton, Sabrina. “It's Official: Rep. Jim Jordan Now Chairs the House Freedom Caucus.” clevelend.com, February 11, 2015. Net. https://web.archive.org/web/201902161...
Eaton, Sabrina. “Rep. Jim Jordan Selected To Chair Republican Study Committee.” cleveland.com, December 8, 2010. Net. https://www.cleveland.com/open/2010/1...
Eaton, Sabrina. “Rep. Jim Jordan To co-found New GOP "House Freedom Caucus." cleveland.com, January 26, 2015. Net. https://www.cleveland.com/open/2015/0...
Golshan, Tara. “Trump Ally and Super-Conservative Jim Jordan Is Running for House Speaker.” Vox, July 26, 2018. Net. https://www.vox.com/2018/7/26/1761717...
“Jim Jordan (American Politician).” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jor...
Kirk, Michael. “Jim Jordan.” Frontline, June 16, 2020. Net. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/in...
Painter, Jim. “Presidential Campaign Draws to a Close.” Sydney Daily News, October 27, 2016. Net. https://www.sidneydailynews.com/news/...
April 28, 2022
The Amoralists -- Lindsey Graham -- Part Five -- Yearning for Relevance
Throughout his time in the White House, Donald Trump collected a number of exceedingly reliable footstools. There was Attorney General William Barr, who basically served as the former president’s personal lawyer. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who regularly shedded his dignity on the guy’s behalf. Mike Pence, other than that one time. And, of course, the vast majority of the Republican Party, which lived in constant fear of getting on the wrong side of the then president.
One member of the GOP who consistently stood out from the bunch in his fealty to 45 was Senator Lindsey Graham. After declaring in June 2016 that he wouldn’t support Trump’s bid for office, referring to the then Republican candidate as a “jackass,” a “kook,” “a race-baiting bigot,” and “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party,” Graham subsequently became one of Trump’s most ardent and obsequious fans.
When Democrats were getting ready to impeach the guy the first time around, over his attempt to extort another country for his personal gain, Graham told reporters the whole thing should be “disposed of very quickly” by the Senate. When people brought up the fact that Trump regularly slandered Graham’s friend John McCain even after McCain was dead, the senator from South Carolina said he was willing to overlook the attacks because “when we play golf, it’s fun.” Two months after a literal insurrection, Graham told Axios: “Donald Trump was my friend before the riot and I’m trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot. I still consider him a friend.” Pressed on the fact that he’d already been reelected for another six years, so politically, he didn’t have to keep this relationship going, Graham doubled down, telling reporter Jonathan Swan it would be “too easy” to simply dump the guy, before claiming, in a highly worrisome way, that while there was a “dark side” to the man who incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, there was also “some magic there.”
In short, Graham has more than proved his servility to Trump over the last six years, and should probably be inducted into some kind of Hall of Fame for boot-licking hacks, or given a key to Mar-a-Lago. Unfortunately, Graham forgot the cardinal rule of serving at the pleasure of Trump, which is that one must vigorously and without fail agree with every single thing the guy does and says, at all times, forever and always. Instead, God help him, the Republican lawmaker expressed an independent thought, and this happened:
Yes, Trump dubbed Graham, a lifelong Republican, a Republican in Name Only, in an interview with Newsmax that aired Tuesday night [February 2022]. That may not sound so bad to some people, but as Trump made clear in 2020, it’s among the worst things he can think to accuse someone of. (“Do you know what RINO is?” he asked a crowd in Arizona. “A RINO may be the lowest form of human life.”) Why is Graham, in Trump’s eyes, a RINO? Because Graham had claimed it was “inappropriate” for Trump to say over the weekend that he might pardon some of the January 6 rioters if reelected in 2024, a move that effectively would allow Trump supporters to get away with waging a violent insurrection.
Which is not a very nice thing to say about someone who’s basically had his head lodged inside your ass for over half a decade now! Though if we know Lindsey, and we think we do, it’ll all be water under the bridge by the end of the month. Last week, the South Carolina senator said in an interview with Fox’s Brian Kilmeade that he’d spent the “whole weekend” with Trump and suggested that the ex-president apparently has total control over the Republican Party. “He will be the nominee in 2024 if he wants it. Stay tuned,” Graham said, adding: “From my point of view, there’s nobody that’s going to beat Donald Trump if he wants to run” (Levin 1).
Sen. Lindsey Graham has some advice, and a warning, for Donald Trump: Focus on the future and making peoples’ lives better, and drop the constant 2020 election claims. But the former president doesn’t appear to be listening.
“Donald Trump is the most consequential Republican in the Republican Party today. He has a great chance of being president again in 2024. He’ll start comparing what he did as president versus what’s going on now, and how to fix the mess we’re in,” Graham, R-S.C., told ABC News on Sunday [February 2022]. “If he looks backward, I think he’s hurting his chances.”
…
In nearly 10 statements released since ABC’s “This Week” program aired Graham’s comments, Trump has made clear he has no intention of taking his sometimes golfing partner’s advice.
Among the messages that have replaced his banned Twitter account are declarations pushing his latest conspiracy theory — this one featuring new claims that Hillary Clinton’s campaign spied on his 2016 campaign and early presidency, which already has been vehemently denied in court.
…
Graham, when pressed by “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos, reiterated his stance that Trump, by focusing so intensely on his false “rigged” 2020 election claims and trying to whitewash the circumstances before and during the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, is threatening to “hurt his cause” for a potential 2024 run.
Then came the warning. “I do believe that if he talked about what he’s capable of doing and remind people what he did in the past, he has a chance to come back,” Graham said. “If he continues to talk about the 2020 election, I think it hurts his cause, and quite frankly, hurts the Republican Party” (Bennett 1).
It took only 24 hours for Donald Trump to hail Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dismembering of independent, democratic, sovereign Ukraine as an act of "genius."
The former President often accuses his enemies falsely of treason, but his own giddy rush to side with a foreign leader who is proving to be an enemy of the United States and the West is shocking even by Trump's self-serving standards.
… Trump's remarks on a conservative radio show on Tuesday [February 2022] will not only find a warm welcome in the Kremlin. They also will concern allies standing alongside the US against Russia who fear for NATO's future if Trump returns.
…
"I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, 'This is genius.' Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful," Trump said in an interview on "The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show."
The ex-President added: "So Putin is now saying, 'It's independent,' a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That's the strongest peace force," Trump said. "We could use that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. ... Here's a guy who's very savvy. ... I know him very well. Very, very well."
...
… Trump's status as the likely favorite for the Republican nomination in 2024 -- and the possibility that he could return to power -- takes his latest crowing over Putin's gangsterism to a new level. He's sending the promise of future favors and approval of Putin's illegal land seizures, which suggest he would do little to reverse them as president.
…
Trump lauded Putin in the interview Tuesday as a "tough cookie" who loves his country and he insisted that he had stopped Putin from invading Ukraine on his watch.
"I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it. I said, 'You can't do it. You're not going to do it.' But I could see that he wanted it," the former President said. In reality, Trump suggested during his 2016 campaign that Russia could keep Crimea, another Ukrainian territory which Putin had annexed in 2014. "The people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were," Trump said, parroting a Kremlin talking point (Collinson 1-3).
On Wednesday, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham insisted that former President Donald Trump had made a “mistake” when he referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "genius" for his invasion of Ukraine.
But a mistake implies that Trump did it once -- unintentionally misspeaking in a way that didn't represent his actual views.
Which is, um, not what Trump did.
…
The day after he made … [his initial comments], he effectively doubled down on them. "They say, 'Trump said Putin's smart.' I mean, he's taking over a country for two dollars' worth of sanctions," Trump told a crowd at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, according to a recording of the event. "I'd say that's pretty smart. He's taking over a country -- really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in."
Then, in a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend [March 2022], Trump, again, repeated his praise of Putin. "Yesterday reporters asked me if I thought President Putin was smart," he said. "I said, 'Of course, he's smart,' to which I was greeted with 'Oh, that's such a terrible thing to say.'" I like to tell them, 'Yes, he's smart.'"
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, well, I must be just plain clueless.
And it's not just these three times that Trump has praised Putin. Not even close!
…See, the thing is, Trump's praise for Putin is a feature, not a bug. He has long admired Putin's strongman tendencies and the power he exerts over his people.
Which means you shouldn't buy what Graham is selling here. Mistakes are things people do unintentionally and then try to fix. Trump's praise for Putin's invasion doesn't fit that bill (Cillizza “Donald” 1).
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s call for a Russian citizen to perform a hit job on Vladimir Putin is such a self-evidently terrible idea that even Ted Cruz, himself a bottomless lode of 24-carat wretched thinking, dunked on its stupidity.
Graham proposed Putin’s assassination on both a Thursday broadcast [March 2022] of “Hannity” and on his Twitter feed. “Is there a Brutus in Russia?” Graham asked on Twitter. “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country — and the world — a great service.”
As if addressing a five-year-old, Cruz used his brief tweet to explain to his fellow Republican senator that the assassination of a foreign head of state was not something that belonged in the American playbook. Sanction Russia, Cruz argued, provide military aid to the Ukrainians, boycott Russian gas and oil, but don’t encourage someone to whack him.
The pitch to terminate Putin, Julius Caesar-style, may sound appealing. Who among us has never wished a maximally violent end on an evil dictator who is committing monstrous acts? But that’s not the way our government works anymore. Assigning Putin’s death might be plausible if we were already at war with Russia, but we’re not — yet! And the unintended consequences of murdering Putin need our consideration before we think of locking and loading.
…
It might be a different matter had Graham called for the assassination of Putin after the United States declared war on Russia. In times of absolute war, heads of state are legitimate targets. But no such state of war currently exists between our two countries.
…
U.S. sponsorship of Putin’s assassination also could easily backfire if Russians interpreted his killing as an act of American escalation that would unite them in favor of new acts of counter-escalation. Russian citizens who share little affinity with Putin or his war today could become patriotic Putinites overnight.
As horrible as the Ukraine war is, there are still ways for it to end far better or far worse. Today, only one person in Russia appears to have the power to end the invasion, and that’s the man who started it. In the short term, Putin should be viewed — perversely — as a potential asset of peace. The quick end to this war requires the West to build more exit ramps for him than can be found on the Santa Monica Freeway. Marking Putin for death would provide a prompt exit for the Russian leader but not the exit ramp we need (Shafer 1-2).
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Friday defended calling for Russians to assassinate President Vladimir Putin, saying it would be the quickest way to end the war in Ukraine.
In an interview on Fox News' "Fox and Friends," Graham said he hopes someone in Russia will understand that Putin is "destroying Russia and you need to take this guy out by any means possible."
The comment came after he floated the suggestion in a Fox News interview Thursday night and again on Twitter.
…
"The only people who can fix this are the Russian people," he wrote in a second tweet. "Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate."
Russian officials pounced on Graham's comments, with Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov telling reporters, "Unfortunately, in such an extremely tense atmosphere, there is a hysterical escalation of Russophobia. These days, not everyone manages to maintain sobriety, I would even say sanity, and many lose their mind."
The Russian ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, said on Facebook that Graham's statement was "unacceptable and outrageous" and said the degree of Russophobia and hatred of Russia in the U.S. is "off the scale."
"It is impossible to believe that a senator of a country that promotes its moral values as a 'guiding star' for all mankind could afford to call for terrorism as a way to achieve Washington’s goals in the international arena," he continued, demanding an official explanation and condemnation of the "criminal" comments.
Graham responded to the ambassador in the Friday interview, saying he is supporting a war criminal who is engaged in war crimes in front of the world.
The Republican senator also faced backlash from conservative members of his own party.
…
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweeted that the world needs leaders with "calm minds & steady wisdom. Not blood thirsty warmongering politicians trying to tweet tough by demanding assassinations."
And Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., tweeted, "When has Sen. Graham encouraging regime change ever ended badly" (Shabad 1)?
Mark Sanford thinks the state of the Republican Party at the moment can be explained entirely through the actions of his one-time colleague: South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.
"We started in Congress together and he's very much of a different school on these kinds of things and adapts where he needs to adapt to hold power," the former South Carolina governor and House member writes in a memoir – titled “Two Roads Diverged” -- out Tuesday, adding: "But I would use him as a canary in the coalmine and the degree to which he has doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on Trump says everything. Whether you like him or not, he has a good political nose for his base."
That is a correct assessment of Graham. And it's the only one that explains how Graham went from an understudy to Sen. John McCain in the early part of this decade to a full-fledged Trumper by the end of it.
As The New York Times put it in a recent profile of Graham:
"What emerges from interviews with more than 60 people close to him, and with the senator himself, is a narrative less of transformation than of gyration — of an infinitely adaptable operator seeking validation in the proximity to power. It is that yearning for relevance, rooted in what he and others described as a childhood of privation and loss, that makes Mr. Graham's story more than just a case study of political survival in the age of Trump."
Put more simply: Graham likes to be close to power and influence -- and will do (and say) whatever it takes to get there. His beliefs are, generally speaking, fungible (Cillizza “How” 1).
Lindsey Graham is not very comfortable with the truth. That’s my “bless your heart” genteel Southern way of saying the senior senator from the great state of South Carolina is full of it. He’s a comfortable liar. He’s shameless. He’s unprincipled. Untruth pours out of his every pore, except when a blatant self-righteousness seeps out of them first. He’s gotten worse over the years.
…
The examples have been piling up for years. The latest example of Graham’s cravenness was on full display during hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. When he wasn’t grilling Jackson about her faith, about how real was her Christianity, he was making dubious remarks about race while his colleagues tried to suggest Jackson was a friend of sexual predators. He blamed his childishness on Democratic treatment of conservative nominees such as Brett Kavanaugh. Never mind that a woman came forward with an ugly allegation against Kavanaugh and that it would have been unseemly to have not considered that in his nomination process. Graham and others voted for him even though 4,500 tips to the FBI on Kavanaugh only led to 10 interviews (Bailey 1).
The issue of child-pornography sentences is ripe for bad-faith partisan exploitation for several reasons. It is hard to talk about, or perhaps too easy to speak about demagogically—as when Senator Lindsey Graham, in the hearing, interrupted Jackson to say that he’d be happy to see anybody caught looking at any quantity of child pornography on a computer sent to prison for fifty years—and added, in reference to that criminal behavior itself, “You don’t think that’s a bad thing.” (She noted that, of course, she thinks it’s a horrible thing; she also noted that each of the perpetrators they’d been talking about was someone whom “I sent to jail.”) When Jackson noted that the tools judges have when sentencing include supervised release, Graham expressed amazement that she would think such a measure was “a bigger deterrent... versus putting them in jail.” “No, Senator, I didn’t say ‘versus,’” Jackson said. “That’s exactly what you said!” Graham responded. (It is not what she said.) (Sorkin 3).
Never mind that Graham voted to appoint Jackson to U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Circuit. He now claims she’s a victory for the “radical left.”
Men like him can’t be shamed; only men with a shred of integrity can be.
He can’t be reasoned with.
All he cares about is power and proximity to even more power.
He isn’t fighting for better health care for needy residents of one of the poorest states in the nation.
He isn’t fighting for the working-class, black, white or Latino. He doesn’t care that thousands of vulnerable kids were forced back into poverty when extended child tax credit payments were discounted in January. He doesn’t care about everyday South Carolinians.
All he cares about is Lindsey.
He’s in his element during Supreme Court hearings because he can act a fool. That’s all he knows. That’s all he wants to know (Bailey 2).
Works cited:
Bailey, Issac. “Lindsey Graham Plays the Fool Again at Kentanji Brown Jackson Hearing.” Charlotte Observer, March 25, 2022. Net. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opi...
Bennett, John T. “Donald Trump Is Ignoring Lindsey Graham’s Warnings about 2020 Election Obsession.” New York Times, February 16, 2022. Net. https://rollcall.com/2022/02/16/donal...
Cillizza, Chris. “Donald Trump Calling Vladimir Putin a 'Genius' Was No Mistake.” CNN, March 3, 2022. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/politi...
Cillizza, Chris. “How Lindsey Graham Is the Perfect Vessel To Understand Donald Trump's Death Grip on the GOP.” CNN, August 24, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politi...
Collinson, Stephen. “Trump Sides with Putin as Biden Tries To Stop a War.” CNN, February 23, 2022. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/23/politi...
Levin, Bess. “Lindsey Graham Spent Six Years with His Head up Trump’s Ass for Nothing.” Vanity Fair, February 2, 2022. Net. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/...
Shabad, Rebecca. “Sen. Lindsey Graham Defends Calling for Russians to Assassinate Putin.” NBC News, March 4, 2022. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/cong...
Shafer, Jack. “On the Stupidity of Lindsey Graham’s Putin Death Sentence.” Politico, March 4, 2022. Net. https://www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Sorkin, Amy Davidson. “The Republicans’ Wild Attacks at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing.” The New Yorker, March 24, 2022. Net. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-...
One member of the GOP who consistently stood out from the bunch in his fealty to 45 was Senator Lindsey Graham. After declaring in June 2016 that he wouldn’t support Trump’s bid for office, referring to the then Republican candidate as a “jackass,” a “kook,” “a race-baiting bigot,” and “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party,” Graham subsequently became one of Trump’s most ardent and obsequious fans.
When Democrats were getting ready to impeach the guy the first time around, over his attempt to extort another country for his personal gain, Graham told reporters the whole thing should be “disposed of very quickly” by the Senate. When people brought up the fact that Trump regularly slandered Graham’s friend John McCain even after McCain was dead, the senator from South Carolina said he was willing to overlook the attacks because “when we play golf, it’s fun.” Two months after a literal insurrection, Graham told Axios: “Donald Trump was my friend before the riot and I’m trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot. I still consider him a friend.” Pressed on the fact that he’d already been reelected for another six years, so politically, he didn’t have to keep this relationship going, Graham doubled down, telling reporter Jonathan Swan it would be “too easy” to simply dump the guy, before claiming, in a highly worrisome way, that while there was a “dark side” to the man who incited a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, there was also “some magic there.”
In short, Graham has more than proved his servility to Trump over the last six years, and should probably be inducted into some kind of Hall of Fame for boot-licking hacks, or given a key to Mar-a-Lago. Unfortunately, Graham forgot the cardinal rule of serving at the pleasure of Trump, which is that one must vigorously and without fail agree with every single thing the guy does and says, at all times, forever and always. Instead, God help him, the Republican lawmaker expressed an independent thought, and this happened:
Yes, Trump dubbed Graham, a lifelong Republican, a Republican in Name Only, in an interview with Newsmax that aired Tuesday night [February 2022]. That may not sound so bad to some people, but as Trump made clear in 2020, it’s among the worst things he can think to accuse someone of. (“Do you know what RINO is?” he asked a crowd in Arizona. “A RINO may be the lowest form of human life.”) Why is Graham, in Trump’s eyes, a RINO? Because Graham had claimed it was “inappropriate” for Trump to say over the weekend that he might pardon some of the January 6 rioters if reelected in 2024, a move that effectively would allow Trump supporters to get away with waging a violent insurrection.
Which is not a very nice thing to say about someone who’s basically had his head lodged inside your ass for over half a decade now! Though if we know Lindsey, and we think we do, it’ll all be water under the bridge by the end of the month. Last week, the South Carolina senator said in an interview with Fox’s Brian Kilmeade that he’d spent the “whole weekend” with Trump and suggested that the ex-president apparently has total control over the Republican Party. “He will be the nominee in 2024 if he wants it. Stay tuned,” Graham said, adding: “From my point of view, there’s nobody that’s going to beat Donald Trump if he wants to run” (Levin 1).
Sen. Lindsey Graham has some advice, and a warning, for Donald Trump: Focus on the future and making peoples’ lives better, and drop the constant 2020 election claims. But the former president doesn’t appear to be listening.
“Donald Trump is the most consequential Republican in the Republican Party today. He has a great chance of being president again in 2024. He’ll start comparing what he did as president versus what’s going on now, and how to fix the mess we’re in,” Graham, R-S.C., told ABC News on Sunday [February 2022]. “If he looks backward, I think he’s hurting his chances.”
…
In nearly 10 statements released since ABC’s “This Week” program aired Graham’s comments, Trump has made clear he has no intention of taking his sometimes golfing partner’s advice.
Among the messages that have replaced his banned Twitter account are declarations pushing his latest conspiracy theory — this one featuring new claims that Hillary Clinton’s campaign spied on his 2016 campaign and early presidency, which already has been vehemently denied in court.
…
Graham, when pressed by “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos, reiterated his stance that Trump, by focusing so intensely on his false “rigged” 2020 election claims and trying to whitewash the circumstances before and during the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, is threatening to “hurt his cause” for a potential 2024 run.
Then came the warning. “I do believe that if he talked about what he’s capable of doing and remind people what he did in the past, he has a chance to come back,” Graham said. “If he continues to talk about the 2020 election, I think it hurts his cause, and quite frankly, hurts the Republican Party” (Bennett 1).
It took only 24 hours for Donald Trump to hail Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dismembering of independent, democratic, sovereign Ukraine as an act of "genius."
The former President often accuses his enemies falsely of treason, but his own giddy rush to side with a foreign leader who is proving to be an enemy of the United States and the West is shocking even by Trump's self-serving standards.
… Trump's remarks on a conservative radio show on Tuesday [February 2022] will not only find a warm welcome in the Kremlin. They also will concern allies standing alongside the US against Russia who fear for NATO's future if Trump returns.
…
"I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, 'This is genius.' Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that's wonderful," Trump said in an interview on "The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show."
The ex-President added: "So Putin is now saying, 'It's independent,' a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he's going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That's the strongest peace force," Trump said. "We could use that on our southern border. That's the strongest peace force I've ever seen. ... Here's a guy who's very savvy. ... I know him very well. Very, very well."
...
… Trump's status as the likely favorite for the Republican nomination in 2024 -- and the possibility that he could return to power -- takes his latest crowing over Putin's gangsterism to a new level. He's sending the promise of future favors and approval of Putin's illegal land seizures, which suggest he would do little to reverse them as president.
…
Trump lauded Putin in the interview Tuesday as a "tough cookie" who loves his country and he insisted that he had stopped Putin from invading Ukraine on his watch.
"I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it. I said, 'You can't do it. You're not going to do it.' But I could see that he wanted it," the former President said. In reality, Trump suggested during his 2016 campaign that Russia could keep Crimea, another Ukrainian territory which Putin had annexed in 2014. "The people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were," Trump said, parroting a Kremlin talking point (Collinson 1-3).
On Wednesday, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham insisted that former President Donald Trump had made a “mistake” when he referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "genius" for his invasion of Ukraine.
But a mistake implies that Trump did it once -- unintentionally misspeaking in a way that didn't represent his actual views.
Which is, um, not what Trump did.
…
The day after he made … [his initial comments], he effectively doubled down on them. "They say, 'Trump said Putin's smart.' I mean, he's taking over a country for two dollars' worth of sanctions," Trump told a crowd at a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, according to a recording of the event. "I'd say that's pretty smart. He's taking over a country -- really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in."
Then, in a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend [March 2022], Trump, again, repeated his praise of Putin. "Yesterday reporters asked me if I thought President Putin was smart," he said. "I said, 'Of course, he's smart,' to which I was greeted with 'Oh, that's such a terrible thing to say.'" I like to tell them, 'Yes, he's smart.'"
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, well, I must be just plain clueless.
And it's not just these three times that Trump has praised Putin. Not even close!
…See, the thing is, Trump's praise for Putin is a feature, not a bug. He has long admired Putin's strongman tendencies and the power he exerts over his people.
Which means you shouldn't buy what Graham is selling here. Mistakes are things people do unintentionally and then try to fix. Trump's praise for Putin's invasion doesn't fit that bill (Cillizza “Donald” 1).
Sen. Lindsey Graham’s call for a Russian citizen to perform a hit job on Vladimir Putin is such a self-evidently terrible idea that even Ted Cruz, himself a bottomless lode of 24-carat wretched thinking, dunked on its stupidity.
Graham proposed Putin’s assassination on both a Thursday broadcast [March 2022] of “Hannity” and on his Twitter feed. “Is there a Brutus in Russia?” Graham asked on Twitter. “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country — and the world — a great service.”
As if addressing a five-year-old, Cruz used his brief tweet to explain to his fellow Republican senator that the assassination of a foreign head of state was not something that belonged in the American playbook. Sanction Russia, Cruz argued, provide military aid to the Ukrainians, boycott Russian gas and oil, but don’t encourage someone to whack him.
The pitch to terminate Putin, Julius Caesar-style, may sound appealing. Who among us has never wished a maximally violent end on an evil dictator who is committing monstrous acts? But that’s not the way our government works anymore. Assigning Putin’s death might be plausible if we were already at war with Russia, but we’re not — yet! And the unintended consequences of murdering Putin need our consideration before we think of locking and loading.
…
It might be a different matter had Graham called for the assassination of Putin after the United States declared war on Russia. In times of absolute war, heads of state are legitimate targets. But no such state of war currently exists between our two countries.
…
U.S. sponsorship of Putin’s assassination also could easily backfire if Russians interpreted his killing as an act of American escalation that would unite them in favor of new acts of counter-escalation. Russian citizens who share little affinity with Putin or his war today could become patriotic Putinites overnight.
As horrible as the Ukraine war is, there are still ways for it to end far better or far worse. Today, only one person in Russia appears to have the power to end the invasion, and that’s the man who started it. In the short term, Putin should be viewed — perversely — as a potential asset of peace. The quick end to this war requires the West to build more exit ramps for him than can be found on the Santa Monica Freeway. Marking Putin for death would provide a prompt exit for the Russian leader but not the exit ramp we need (Shafer 1-2).
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Friday defended calling for Russians to assassinate President Vladimir Putin, saying it would be the quickest way to end the war in Ukraine.
In an interview on Fox News' "Fox and Friends," Graham said he hopes someone in Russia will understand that Putin is "destroying Russia and you need to take this guy out by any means possible."
The comment came after he floated the suggestion in a Fox News interview Thursday night and again on Twitter.
…
"The only people who can fix this are the Russian people," he wrote in a second tweet. "Easy to say, hard to do. Unless you want to live in darkness for the rest of your life, be isolated from the rest of the world in abject poverty, and live in darkness you need to step up to the plate."
Russian officials pounced on Graham's comments, with Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov telling reporters, "Unfortunately, in such an extremely tense atmosphere, there is a hysterical escalation of Russophobia. These days, not everyone manages to maintain sobriety, I would even say sanity, and many lose their mind."
The Russian ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Antonov, said on Facebook that Graham's statement was "unacceptable and outrageous" and said the degree of Russophobia and hatred of Russia in the U.S. is "off the scale."
"It is impossible to believe that a senator of a country that promotes its moral values as a 'guiding star' for all mankind could afford to call for terrorism as a way to achieve Washington’s goals in the international arena," he continued, demanding an official explanation and condemnation of the "criminal" comments.
Graham responded to the ambassador in the Friday interview, saying he is supporting a war criminal who is engaged in war crimes in front of the world.
The Republican senator also faced backlash from conservative members of his own party.
…
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., tweeted that the world needs leaders with "calm minds & steady wisdom. Not blood thirsty warmongering politicians trying to tweet tough by demanding assassinations."
And Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., tweeted, "When has Sen. Graham encouraging regime change ever ended badly" (Shabad 1)?
Mark Sanford thinks the state of the Republican Party at the moment can be explained entirely through the actions of his one-time colleague: South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.
"We started in Congress together and he's very much of a different school on these kinds of things and adapts where he needs to adapt to hold power," the former South Carolina governor and House member writes in a memoir – titled “Two Roads Diverged” -- out Tuesday, adding: "But I would use him as a canary in the coalmine and the degree to which he has doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on Trump says everything. Whether you like him or not, he has a good political nose for his base."
That is a correct assessment of Graham. And it's the only one that explains how Graham went from an understudy to Sen. John McCain in the early part of this decade to a full-fledged Trumper by the end of it.
As The New York Times put it in a recent profile of Graham:
"What emerges from interviews with more than 60 people close to him, and with the senator himself, is a narrative less of transformation than of gyration — of an infinitely adaptable operator seeking validation in the proximity to power. It is that yearning for relevance, rooted in what he and others described as a childhood of privation and loss, that makes Mr. Graham's story more than just a case study of political survival in the age of Trump."
Put more simply: Graham likes to be close to power and influence -- and will do (and say) whatever it takes to get there. His beliefs are, generally speaking, fungible (Cillizza “How” 1).
Lindsey Graham is not very comfortable with the truth. That’s my “bless your heart” genteel Southern way of saying the senior senator from the great state of South Carolina is full of it. He’s a comfortable liar. He’s shameless. He’s unprincipled. Untruth pours out of his every pore, except when a blatant self-righteousness seeps out of them first. He’s gotten worse over the years.
…
The examples have been piling up for years. The latest example of Graham’s cravenness was on full display during hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. When he wasn’t grilling Jackson about her faith, about how real was her Christianity, he was making dubious remarks about race while his colleagues tried to suggest Jackson was a friend of sexual predators. He blamed his childishness on Democratic treatment of conservative nominees such as Brett Kavanaugh. Never mind that a woman came forward with an ugly allegation against Kavanaugh and that it would have been unseemly to have not considered that in his nomination process. Graham and others voted for him even though 4,500 tips to the FBI on Kavanaugh only led to 10 interviews (Bailey 1).
The issue of child-pornography sentences is ripe for bad-faith partisan exploitation for several reasons. It is hard to talk about, or perhaps too easy to speak about demagogically—as when Senator Lindsey Graham, in the hearing, interrupted Jackson to say that he’d be happy to see anybody caught looking at any quantity of child pornography on a computer sent to prison for fifty years—and added, in reference to that criminal behavior itself, “You don’t think that’s a bad thing.” (She noted that, of course, she thinks it’s a horrible thing; she also noted that each of the perpetrators they’d been talking about was someone whom “I sent to jail.”) When Jackson noted that the tools judges have when sentencing include supervised release, Graham expressed amazement that she would think such a measure was “a bigger deterrent... versus putting them in jail.” “No, Senator, I didn’t say ‘versus,’” Jackson said. “That’s exactly what you said!” Graham responded. (It is not what she said.) (Sorkin 3).
Never mind that Graham voted to appoint Jackson to U.S. Court of Appeals for the District Circuit. He now claims she’s a victory for the “radical left.”
Men like him can’t be shamed; only men with a shred of integrity can be.
He can’t be reasoned with.
All he cares about is power and proximity to even more power.
He isn’t fighting for better health care for needy residents of one of the poorest states in the nation.
He isn’t fighting for the working-class, black, white or Latino. He doesn’t care that thousands of vulnerable kids were forced back into poverty when extended child tax credit payments were discounted in January. He doesn’t care about everyday South Carolinians.
All he cares about is Lindsey.
He’s in his element during Supreme Court hearings because he can act a fool. That’s all he knows. That’s all he wants to know (Bailey 2).
Works cited:
Bailey, Issac. “Lindsey Graham Plays the Fool Again at Kentanji Brown Jackson Hearing.” Charlotte Observer, March 25, 2022. Net. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opi...
Bennett, John T. “Donald Trump Is Ignoring Lindsey Graham’s Warnings about 2020 Election Obsession.” New York Times, February 16, 2022. Net. https://rollcall.com/2022/02/16/donal...
Cillizza, Chris. “Donald Trump Calling Vladimir Putin a 'Genius' Was No Mistake.” CNN, March 3, 2022. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/politi...
Cillizza, Chris. “How Lindsey Graham Is the Perfect Vessel To Understand Donald Trump's Death Grip on the GOP.” CNN, August 24, 2021. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politi...
Collinson, Stephen. “Trump Sides with Putin as Biden Tries To Stop a War.” CNN, February 23, 2022. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/23/politi...
Levin, Bess. “Lindsey Graham Spent Six Years with His Head up Trump’s Ass for Nothing.” Vanity Fair, February 2, 2022. Net. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/...
Shabad, Rebecca. “Sen. Lindsey Graham Defends Calling for Russians to Assassinate Putin.” NBC News, March 4, 2022. Net. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/cong...
Shafer, Jack. “On the Stupidity of Lindsey Graham’s Putin Death Sentence.” Politico, March 4, 2022. Net. https://www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Sorkin, Amy Davidson. “The Republicans’ Wild Attacks at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing.” The New Yorker, March 24, 2022. Net. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-...
April 24, 2022
The Amoralists -- Lindsey Graham -- Part Four -- Back and Forth
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., couldn't care less if you think he is a hypocrite for working with the president.
Graham sat down with CNN's Kate Bolduan [June 2018], who asked the senator when he could trust the words coming out of President Trump's mouth. She also highlighted Graham's past scuffles and his current coziness with the president.
"I'm going to sum it up," Bolduan said. "You went from hating him, making fun of him, finding peace with trying to work with him where you can work with him. Then, he comes out and hits you again on whatever he decided to on a given day. Do you trust him now?"
The senator responded that it's not about trusting the president — it's about working together to get "things that are big and matter" done.
"Here's what I got: I got a relationship with the president at a time when I think he needs allies," Graham said.
Bolduan interrupted, asking, "People say this is two-faced. Where's the Lindsey Graham of standing up to Donald Trump? What do you say?"
Graham responded that he would let the president know when he thinks he's wrong, but that he didn't receive this kind of criticism when working with President Obama.
“… I know how the game’s played and I don’t give a damn. I’m going to do what’s best for the country."
Graham has recently criticized Trump for his approach of handling Russia and the Mueller investigation. Earlier this week, Graham disagreed with Trump's desire to add Russia back into G-7 and called the move "a mistake."
He also distanced himself from the president after his #spygates tweets. Graham had pointed out that “a confidential informant is not a spy” and said he is not buying the Rudy Giuliani's claim that Mueller is trying to frame Trump.
…
"So if you don’t like me working with President Trump to make the world a better place," Graham said, "I don’t give a shit” (Ramirez 1-2).
[September 2019] Senator Lindsey Graham, once among Donald Trump’s harshest critics, is set to lead the charge to defend him in the court of public opinion as Democrats make the case for impeachment.
The Republican senator from South Carolina has rejected the allegation that Trump betrayed America’s national security interests by pressing the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigate political rival Joe Biden days after freezing some military aid to the country.
Graham and other allies of the president have sought to fight back by arguing that a whistleblower who raised the alarm was not on the call between Trump and Zelenskiy but based his complaint on officials’ recollections of it.
“In America you can’t even get a parking ticket based on hearsay testimony,” Graham tweeted on Saturday. “But you can impeach a president? I certainly hope not.”
The senator played golf with Trump, as well as professionals Gary Player and Annika Sörenstam, at the president’s club in Sterling, Virginia on Saturday morning, according to a White House pool report. It seemed likely Trump and Graham had plenty of time to strategise how to reclaim the political narrative.
…
… Graham was overheard saying: “This is Kavanaugh on steroids! This is hearsay – and this person has bias” (Smith 1, 2).
In 2016, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina praised the integrity of the nation’s elections system, criticizing claims by Donald J. Trump that the vote was “rigged.”
“Like most Americans, I have confidence in our democracy and our election system,” Mr. Graham said in a statement on Twitter. “If he loses, it will not be because the system is ‘rigged’ but because he failed as a candidate.”
What a difference four years makes.
Mr. Graham, who has transformed during that time to become one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal allies, now seems determined to reverse the election’s outcome on the president’s behalf.
On Friday [November 2020], he phoned Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia and a fellow Republican, wondering about the possibility of a slight tinkering with the state’s elections outcome.
What if, Mr. Graham suggested on the call, according to Mr. Raffensperger, he had the power to toss out all of the mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures on ballots?
In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Raffensperger said he was stunned that Mr. Graham had appeared to suggest that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots.
“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Mr. Raffensperger said of the call from Mr. Graham, the chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Graham seems bent on making every attempt to engineer a second term for Mr. Trump, despite President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s clear victory. The senator has suggested that this year’s vote represents the Republican Party’s last gasp, unless something is done to reverse the current state of election operations — the same system he praised in 2016.
“If Republicans don’t challenge and change the U.S. election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again,” Mr. Graham said on Sunday on Fox News.
The phone call to Mr. Raffensperger was one in a string of episodes in which Mr. Graham, who won his own re-election bid this month, has tried to cast doubt on the presidential election’s outcome, demanding that Mr. Trump not concede the race to Mr. Biden despite the Democrat’s decisive Electoral College victory —306 to 232 electoral votes.
…
In an appearance last week on Fox News, Mr. Graham claimed that Nevada’s vote-counting system had failed to verify signatures because the software was turned off, an accusation that had been refuted.
…
On Tuesday, Mr. Graham’s office said he had raised concerns about vote counting in Georgia as well as in Arizona and Nevada “as a United States senator who is worried about the integrity of the election process nationally, when it comes to vote by mail” (Saul 1-2).
Regarding the Attack on the Capitol Building January 6, 2021
Let's see what Lindsey Graham thought on the evening of January 6, a speech that sounds a lot like what many Republican leaders were saying that week.
Trump and I have had a hell of a journey. I hate it being this way. Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he's been a consequential president. But today...first thing you'll see.
All I can say is: Count me out. Enough is enough. I've tried to be helpful. But when the Wisconsin supreme court ruled 4 to 3 that they didn't violate the constitution of Wisconsin, I agree with the 3 but I accept the 4. If Al Gore can accept 5-4 he's not president, I can accept Wisconsin 4-3.
Pennsylvania—it went to the second circuit. So much for all the judges being in Trump's pocket. They said, "No, you're wrong." I accept the Pennsylvania second circuit, that Trump's lawsuit wasn't right.
Georgia—they say the secretary of state took the law in his own hands, that he changed the election laws unlawfully. A federal judge said no. I accept the federal judge, even if I don't agree with it.
Fraud—they say there's 66,000 people under 18 voted. How many people believe that? I asked, "Give me 10." And they had one. They said 8,000 felons in Arizona voted. "Give me 10." Haven't gotten one. Does that say there's problems in every election? I don't buy this. Enough's enough. We've got to end it.
…
… the path from Trump's attempts to overturn the election loss to January 6 was completely and abundantly clear to everyone. The mob stormed the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden and keep Trump in office. But now, we hear, this is all being politicized (Holmes 1-2).
As lawmakers were being evacuated from the Capitol on Jan. 6, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) reportedly told the Senate sergeant-at-arms to use guns to quell the people who had breached the building.
According to a long-form piece published by The Washington Post on Sunday, the Republican senator was furious that lawmakers were being forced to evacuate and yelled at the Senate sergeant-at-arms, "What are you doing? Take back the Senate! You’ve got guns. Use them.”
“We give you guns for a reason,” Graham reportedly continued. “Use them.”
According to the Post's report, Graham also called former President Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, giving her suggestions on what her father should say to appeal to the rioters to calm down and vacate the Capitol.
“You need to get these people out of here,” Graham reportedly said to Ivanka Trump over the phone. “This thing is going south. This is not good. You’re going to have to tell these people to stand down. Stand down.”
The South Carolina senator was reportedly enraged by former President Trump's subsequent video message to the rioters, in which he said, "We have to have peace. So go home. We love you, you’re very special."
…
"They could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all. They could've destroyed the government," Graham said to reporters one day after the breach. "Lethal force should have been used. ... We dodged a major bullet. If this is not a wake-up call I don't know what is."
…
Graham was among the most vocal Republican lawmakers to decry the insurrection and to tie Trump to the incident, though he ultimately did not vote to convict the former president in his second impeachment trial (Choi 1, 2).
With Trump now out of office, banned from social media, and fresh off a trial in which a bipartisan majority of senators voted for his conviction, the Republican Party is polarized.
…
On the pro-Trump side stands Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Graham was one of Trump’s most loyal supporters during his time in office, but that momentarily changed following the January 6 insurrection when Graham gave a speech distancing himself from Trump.
“Count me out. Enough is enough.” Graham said.
Graham quickly had second thoughts about this stance, traveling with Trump during his last trip as president and shamelessly defending Trump on TV.
If Graham’s Sunday morning appearance on Fox News Sunday [February 2021] is an indication, his loyalty to the former president is stronger than ever.
“Donald Trump is the most vibrant member of the Republican Party,” Graham said, distancing himself from former UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s comments about Trump not having a future in the GOP. “The Trump movement is alive and well ... all I can say is that the most potent force in the Republican Party is President Trump.”
Those comments came at the end of an interview that began with Graham suggesting Republicans will go as far as to retaliate for Trump’s second impeachment by impeaching Vice President Kamala Harris if they take back the House next year.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an avid Trump supporter who voted to acquit the former president during his second impeachment trial, joined lawmakers' calls for a 9/11-style commission into the Jan. 6 Capitol siege while on "Fox News Sunday."
…
… Graham seems to be calculating that Trumpism represents the Republican Party’s best bet to retake one or both chambers of Congress next year (Rupar 2).
… Momentum has been growing since last month for a bipartisan commission to investigate the lethal attack on the Capitol, and is one of the last ways Congress could attempt to hold Trump accountable for the violence, the New York Times reports.
… “We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again, and I want to make sure that the Capitol footprint can be better defended next time,” Graham said on Fox [February 2021]. He also made clear on Sunday that he believes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's condemnation of Trump following his acquittal was a mistake and could come back to haunt Republicans in 2022 (Rummier 1).
In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, a number of Republicans, even those who protected Donald Trump from impeachment, paid lip service to the idea of a probe into the events of that day. “We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened,” Lindsey Graham said in February, “and make sure it never happens again.” But it was always obvious they didn’t actually support such an undertaking. Any real investigation into the deadly riot and everything that led to it would surely find fault not only in their demagogic leader, but in themselves. Graham and the rest of the Senate GOP shot down legislation to establish such a commission in May (Lutz 1).
Sandra Garza, the longtime partner of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, recalled confronting Sen. Lindsey Graham while advocating for a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6.
…
Garza told The New York Times that she and Sicknick supported former President Donald Trump and had doubts about the 2020 election. She met with Graham and other Republican senators in May [2021], alongside other officers, as the Senate considered approving the commission.
But, Garza said, Graham appeared bored and distracted while D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone recounted his experiences during the riot, so she confronted the South Carolina senator.
“I feel like you're being very disrespectful, and you're looking out the window and tapping your fingers on the desk,'" she recalled telling Graham. Another Republican senator then tried to tell her she was misreading Graham's body language, further infuriating her, according to The Times.
South Carolina's junior senator, Tim Scott, was also at the meeting and said that both he and Graham were in favor of accountability, but not a commission.
In a statement at the time, Graham said that he would not support the commission, because its "approach will turn into a partisan food fight." … (Metzger 2).
Works cited:
Choi, Joseph. “Graham Told Officers on Jan. 6 To Use Their Guns on Rioters: Report.” The Hill, November 1, 2021. Net. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5...
Holmes, Jack. “Let's Compare What Lindsey Graham Said on January 6 to What He Said One Year Later.” Esquire, January 6, 2022. Net. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics...
Lutz, Eric. Republicans Are Already Turning the January 6 Investigation into a Clown Show.” Vanity Fair, July 20, 2021. Net. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/...
Metzger, Bryan. “Fallen Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick's Partner Called Out Sen. Lindsey Graham for Being 'Very Disrespectful' during a Jan. 6 Commission Meeting.” Yahoo News, January 4, 2022. Net. https://news.yahoo.com/fallen-capitol...
Ramirez, Izzie. “Lindsey Graham on Being Called a Hypocrite for Cozying Up to Trump: ‘I Don’t Give a Sh*t’.” Salon, June 15, 2018. Net. https://www.salon.com/2018/06/15/lind...
Rummier, Orion. Lindsey Graham Voices Support for 9/11-Style Probe into Capitol Siege.” Axios, February 14, 2021. Net. https://www.axios.com/capitol-siege-t...
Rupar, Aaron. “Lindsey Graham’s Latest Fox News Sunday Appearance Highlights the GOP’s Identity Crisis.” Vox, February 14, 2021. Net. https://www.vox.com/2021/2/14/2228284...
Saul, Stephanie. “Lindsey Graham’s Long-Shot Mission To Unravel the Election Results.” New York Times, November 17, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/us...
Smith, David. Graham Prepares Trump Defence as Impeachment Fury Intensifies.” The Guardian, September 28, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
Graham sat down with CNN's Kate Bolduan [June 2018], who asked the senator when he could trust the words coming out of President Trump's mouth. She also highlighted Graham's past scuffles and his current coziness with the president.
"I'm going to sum it up," Bolduan said. "You went from hating him, making fun of him, finding peace with trying to work with him where you can work with him. Then, he comes out and hits you again on whatever he decided to on a given day. Do you trust him now?"
The senator responded that it's not about trusting the president — it's about working together to get "things that are big and matter" done.
"Here's what I got: I got a relationship with the president at a time when I think he needs allies," Graham said.
Bolduan interrupted, asking, "People say this is two-faced. Where's the Lindsey Graham of standing up to Donald Trump? What do you say?"
Graham responded that he would let the president know when he thinks he's wrong, but that he didn't receive this kind of criticism when working with President Obama.
“… I know how the game’s played and I don’t give a damn. I’m going to do what’s best for the country."
Graham has recently criticized Trump for his approach of handling Russia and the Mueller investigation. Earlier this week, Graham disagreed with Trump's desire to add Russia back into G-7 and called the move "a mistake."
He also distanced himself from the president after his #spygates tweets. Graham had pointed out that “a confidential informant is not a spy” and said he is not buying the Rudy Giuliani's claim that Mueller is trying to frame Trump.
…
"So if you don’t like me working with President Trump to make the world a better place," Graham said, "I don’t give a shit” (Ramirez 1-2).
[September 2019] Senator Lindsey Graham, once among Donald Trump’s harshest critics, is set to lead the charge to defend him in the court of public opinion as Democrats make the case for impeachment.
The Republican senator from South Carolina has rejected the allegation that Trump betrayed America’s national security interests by pressing the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigate political rival Joe Biden days after freezing some military aid to the country.
Graham and other allies of the president have sought to fight back by arguing that a whistleblower who raised the alarm was not on the call between Trump and Zelenskiy but based his complaint on officials’ recollections of it.
“In America you can’t even get a parking ticket based on hearsay testimony,” Graham tweeted on Saturday. “But you can impeach a president? I certainly hope not.”
The senator played golf with Trump, as well as professionals Gary Player and Annika Sörenstam, at the president’s club in Sterling, Virginia on Saturday morning, according to a White House pool report. It seemed likely Trump and Graham had plenty of time to strategise how to reclaim the political narrative.
…
… Graham was overheard saying: “This is Kavanaugh on steroids! This is hearsay – and this person has bias” (Smith 1, 2).
In 2016, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina praised the integrity of the nation’s elections system, criticizing claims by Donald J. Trump that the vote was “rigged.”
“Like most Americans, I have confidence in our democracy and our election system,” Mr. Graham said in a statement on Twitter. “If he loses, it will not be because the system is ‘rigged’ but because he failed as a candidate.”
What a difference four years makes.
Mr. Graham, who has transformed during that time to become one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal allies, now seems determined to reverse the election’s outcome on the president’s behalf.
On Friday [November 2020], he phoned Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia and a fellow Republican, wondering about the possibility of a slight tinkering with the state’s elections outcome.
What if, Mr. Graham suggested on the call, according to Mr. Raffensperger, he had the power to toss out all of the mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures on ballots?
In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Raffensperger said he was stunned that Mr. Graham had appeared to suggest that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots.
“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Mr. Raffensperger said of the call from Mr. Graham, the chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Graham seems bent on making every attempt to engineer a second term for Mr. Trump, despite President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s clear victory. The senator has suggested that this year’s vote represents the Republican Party’s last gasp, unless something is done to reverse the current state of election operations — the same system he praised in 2016.
“If Republicans don’t challenge and change the U.S. election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again,” Mr. Graham said on Sunday on Fox News.
The phone call to Mr. Raffensperger was one in a string of episodes in which Mr. Graham, who won his own re-election bid this month, has tried to cast doubt on the presidential election’s outcome, demanding that Mr. Trump not concede the race to Mr. Biden despite the Democrat’s decisive Electoral College victory —306 to 232 electoral votes.
…
In an appearance last week on Fox News, Mr. Graham claimed that Nevada’s vote-counting system had failed to verify signatures because the software was turned off, an accusation that had been refuted.
…
On Tuesday, Mr. Graham’s office said he had raised concerns about vote counting in Georgia as well as in Arizona and Nevada “as a United States senator who is worried about the integrity of the election process nationally, when it comes to vote by mail” (Saul 1-2).
Regarding the Attack on the Capitol Building January 6, 2021
Let's see what Lindsey Graham thought on the evening of January 6, a speech that sounds a lot like what many Republican leaders were saying that week.
Trump and I have had a hell of a journey. I hate it being this way. Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he's been a consequential president. But today...first thing you'll see.
All I can say is: Count me out. Enough is enough. I've tried to be helpful. But when the Wisconsin supreme court ruled 4 to 3 that they didn't violate the constitution of Wisconsin, I agree with the 3 but I accept the 4. If Al Gore can accept 5-4 he's not president, I can accept Wisconsin 4-3.
Pennsylvania—it went to the second circuit. So much for all the judges being in Trump's pocket. They said, "No, you're wrong." I accept the Pennsylvania second circuit, that Trump's lawsuit wasn't right.
Georgia—they say the secretary of state took the law in his own hands, that he changed the election laws unlawfully. A federal judge said no. I accept the federal judge, even if I don't agree with it.
Fraud—they say there's 66,000 people under 18 voted. How many people believe that? I asked, "Give me 10." And they had one. They said 8,000 felons in Arizona voted. "Give me 10." Haven't gotten one. Does that say there's problems in every election? I don't buy this. Enough's enough. We've got to end it.
…
… the path from Trump's attempts to overturn the election loss to January 6 was completely and abundantly clear to everyone. The mob stormed the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden and keep Trump in office. But now, we hear, this is all being politicized (Holmes 1-2).
As lawmakers were being evacuated from the Capitol on Jan. 6, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) reportedly told the Senate sergeant-at-arms to use guns to quell the people who had breached the building.
According to a long-form piece published by The Washington Post on Sunday, the Republican senator was furious that lawmakers were being forced to evacuate and yelled at the Senate sergeant-at-arms, "What are you doing? Take back the Senate! You’ve got guns. Use them.”
“We give you guns for a reason,” Graham reportedly continued. “Use them.”
According to the Post's report, Graham also called former President Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, giving her suggestions on what her father should say to appeal to the rioters to calm down and vacate the Capitol.
“You need to get these people out of here,” Graham reportedly said to Ivanka Trump over the phone. “This thing is going south. This is not good. You’re going to have to tell these people to stand down. Stand down.”
The South Carolina senator was reportedly enraged by former President Trump's subsequent video message to the rioters, in which he said, "We have to have peace. So go home. We love you, you’re very special."
…
"They could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all. They could've destroyed the government," Graham said to reporters one day after the breach. "Lethal force should have been used. ... We dodged a major bullet. If this is not a wake-up call I don't know what is."
…
Graham was among the most vocal Republican lawmakers to decry the insurrection and to tie Trump to the incident, though he ultimately did not vote to convict the former president in his second impeachment trial (Choi 1, 2).
With Trump now out of office, banned from social media, and fresh off a trial in which a bipartisan majority of senators voted for his conviction, the Republican Party is polarized.
…
On the pro-Trump side stands Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Graham was one of Trump’s most loyal supporters during his time in office, but that momentarily changed following the January 6 insurrection when Graham gave a speech distancing himself from Trump.
“Count me out. Enough is enough.” Graham said.
Graham quickly had second thoughts about this stance, traveling with Trump during his last trip as president and shamelessly defending Trump on TV.
If Graham’s Sunday morning appearance on Fox News Sunday [February 2021] is an indication, his loyalty to the former president is stronger than ever.
“Donald Trump is the most vibrant member of the Republican Party,” Graham said, distancing himself from former UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s comments about Trump not having a future in the GOP. “The Trump movement is alive and well ... all I can say is that the most potent force in the Republican Party is President Trump.”
Those comments came at the end of an interview that began with Graham suggesting Republicans will go as far as to retaliate for Trump’s second impeachment by impeaching Vice President Kamala Harris if they take back the House next year.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an avid Trump supporter who voted to acquit the former president during his second impeachment trial, joined lawmakers' calls for a 9/11-style commission into the Jan. 6 Capitol siege while on "Fox News Sunday."
…
… Graham seems to be calculating that Trumpism represents the Republican Party’s best bet to retake one or both chambers of Congress next year (Rupar 2).
… Momentum has been growing since last month for a bipartisan commission to investigate the lethal attack on the Capitol, and is one of the last ways Congress could attempt to hold Trump accountable for the violence, the New York Times reports.
… “We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again, and I want to make sure that the Capitol footprint can be better defended next time,” Graham said on Fox [February 2021]. He also made clear on Sunday that he believes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's condemnation of Trump following his acquittal was a mistake and could come back to haunt Republicans in 2022 (Rummier 1).
In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 insurrection, a number of Republicans, even those who protected Donald Trump from impeachment, paid lip service to the idea of a probe into the events of that day. “We need a 9/11 commission to find out what happened,” Lindsey Graham said in February, “and make sure it never happens again.” But it was always obvious they didn’t actually support such an undertaking. Any real investigation into the deadly riot and everything that led to it would surely find fault not only in their demagogic leader, but in themselves. Graham and the rest of the Senate GOP shot down legislation to establish such a commission in May (Lutz 1).
Sandra Garza, the longtime partner of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, recalled confronting Sen. Lindsey Graham while advocating for a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6.
…
Garza told The New York Times that she and Sicknick supported former President Donald Trump and had doubts about the 2020 election. She met with Graham and other Republican senators in May [2021], alongside other officers, as the Senate considered approving the commission.
But, Garza said, Graham appeared bored and distracted while D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone recounted his experiences during the riot, so she confronted the South Carolina senator.
“I feel like you're being very disrespectful, and you're looking out the window and tapping your fingers on the desk,'" she recalled telling Graham. Another Republican senator then tried to tell her she was misreading Graham's body language, further infuriating her, according to The Times.
South Carolina's junior senator, Tim Scott, was also at the meeting and said that both he and Graham were in favor of accountability, but not a commission.
In a statement at the time, Graham said that he would not support the commission, because its "approach will turn into a partisan food fight." … (Metzger 2).
Works cited:
Choi, Joseph. “Graham Told Officers on Jan. 6 To Use Their Guns on Rioters: Report.” The Hill, November 1, 2021. Net. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5...
Holmes, Jack. “Let's Compare What Lindsey Graham Said on January 6 to What He Said One Year Later.” Esquire, January 6, 2022. Net. https://www.esquire.com/news-politics...
Lutz, Eric. Republicans Are Already Turning the January 6 Investigation into a Clown Show.” Vanity Fair, July 20, 2021. Net. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/...
Metzger, Bryan. “Fallen Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick's Partner Called Out Sen. Lindsey Graham for Being 'Very Disrespectful' during a Jan. 6 Commission Meeting.” Yahoo News, January 4, 2022. Net. https://news.yahoo.com/fallen-capitol...
Ramirez, Izzie. “Lindsey Graham on Being Called a Hypocrite for Cozying Up to Trump: ‘I Don’t Give a Sh*t’.” Salon, June 15, 2018. Net. https://www.salon.com/2018/06/15/lind...
Rummier, Orion. Lindsey Graham Voices Support for 9/11-Style Probe into Capitol Siege.” Axios, February 14, 2021. Net. https://www.axios.com/capitol-siege-t...
Rupar, Aaron. “Lindsey Graham’s Latest Fox News Sunday Appearance Highlights the GOP’s Identity Crisis.” Vox, February 14, 2021. Net. https://www.vox.com/2021/2/14/2228284...
Saul, Stephanie. “Lindsey Graham’s Long-Shot Mission To Unravel the Election Results.” New York Times, November 17, 2020. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/us...
Smith, David. Graham Prepares Trump Defence as Impeachment Fury Intensifies.” The Guardian, September 28, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
April 21, 2022
The Amoralists -- Lindsey Graham -- Part Three -- Slow Motion Transformation
Nobody is a bigger thorn in President Obama's side right now than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). And nothing could be better for Graham's political prospects in 2014.
Graham has been such an outspoken critic of Obama on Libya that the president called him out by name at last week's press conference. "If Sen. (John) McCain and Sen. Graham, and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me," Obama said after Graham and McCain criticized U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.
Graham's response? He very quickly released a full-throated statement saying Obama "failed as Commander in Chief before, during, and after the attack." Graham then upped the ante even more, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday to repeatedly accuse the Obama Administration of burying bad news before an election.
Graham, of course, is a top GOP voice on matters of foreign policy, so to see him jousting with the president isn't terribly surprising.
But it's hard not to look at these things in a political context, and Graham has lots to gain personally by becoming a high-profile critic of Obama.
After two election cycles in which tea party and conservative groups have taken down a number of incumbent senators and establishment candidates who were viewed as insufficiently conservative, Graham now finds himself as the RINO-du-jour for many of these groups in the 2014 primary season.
While Graham is a pretty down-the-line conservative on matters of foreign policy, socially and economically conservative groups have never been happy with him -- particularly coming from a reliably red state -- and Graham has irritated conservatives by voting for Obama's Supreme Court nominees on the Senate Judiciary Committee and working with Democrats on climate change.
…
[It becomes tougher to primary out] the guy you're trying to unseat [when he’s] on TV every day saying something hugely critical of the Democratic president (Blake 1-2).
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is continuing his criticism of the president and the Obama administration, saying he [Obama] is on his way to earn another “lie of the year.”
“Last year he got the lie of the year award for saying, ‘If you like your health care, you can keep it.’ He’s going to have back-to-back titles by saying this,” Graham said Monday on Fox News’s “Cavuto.”
Graham’s latest attack — referencing Politifact declaring President Barack Obama’s health care comment “Lie of the Year in 2013 — follows the president’s pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.
In the interview, Obama dismissed charges that they did not call it [the Benghazi killing] a “terror” attack to benefit his reelection campaign.
“That’s what folks like you are telling them. And what I’m saying is, that is inaccurate,” Obama said. “We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time. The notion that we would hide the ball for political purposes when a week later we all said in fact there was a terrorist attack taking place and the day after I said it was an act of terror, that wouldn’t be a very good cover-up.”
However, Graham said the American people were misled and that Benghazi isn’t a story pushed by Republicans or Fox News.
“This will catch up with him because they’re misleading us and the president is still misleading us. You would have to suspend disbelief, as someone famously said, to believe what the president said to Bill O’Reilly,” the senator said (McCalmont 1).
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina returned Monday [June 1, 2015] to the neighborhood where he was raised to announce that he is running for president, injecting a hawkish foreign policy voice into a crowded field of Republican contenders.
… Mr. Graham, 59, has said his fear that the world is “exploding in terror and violence” inspired him to run for the White House. He will try to convince voters that a platform of pragmatism at home and “security through strength” abroad is the formula to give Republicans the best chance to beat Hillary Rodham Clinton if she becomes the Democratic nominee (Rappeport 1).
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham hit back against the far right wing of his party a day after the CNN Republican debate in Las Vegas, saying Barack Obama “is my President” and calling the anger against him “unhealthy.”
“To those people who think Obama’s a Muslim who was born in Kenya, I lost you a long time ago,” Graham said Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day.” “There’s a dislike of Obama in my party that’s unhealthy, there was a dislike for President (George W.) Bush in the Democratic party that was unhealthy. He is my President.”
Graham said Obama called him Tuesday to talk about working with Iraq’s new prime minister, but the South Carolina senator was also candid about Obama’s handling of ISIS.
“I think he has screwed this up 10 ways to Sunday, but Bush made his fair share of mistakes too,” Graham said.
Graham accepted some credit for his one-liners and strong performance during Tuesday’s undercard debate, saying “I am hilarious.”
Throughout the night he attacked Donald Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country and warned against pushing more Muslims into the arms of ISIS.
Graham has consistently been a standout performer on the undercard stage, but he has yet to earn enough support in the polls to force his way onto the main stage (LoBianco 1).
Since Trump’s Presidential campaign announcement last June, Sen. Graham has repeatedly warned about the dangers Trump poses not only to the Republican Party, but America as a whole:
July 2015: “I think [Donald Trump is] uninformed about the situation regarding the illegal immigrant population. I think he has hijacked the debate. I think he is a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican party with the Hispanic community and we need to push back.”
August 2015:“Well, Donald Trump’s plan on immigration is stupid. … You’re not going to get 11 million people out of this country. That’s just not practical, that’s going to kill the Republican Party. It’s self-deportation on steroids.”
…
December 2015: “You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell. He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. … He’s the ISIL man of the year.”
December 2015: “I believe Donald Trump is destroying the Republican chances to win an election that we can’t afford to lose. I believe we’re losing the Hispanic vote because they think we don’t like them…
January 2016, on choosing between Trump and Cruz: “It’s like being shot or poisoned. What does it really matter?”
March 2016: “The bottom line is that I believe Donald Trump would be an absolute, utter disaster for the Republican Party, destroy conservatism as we know it. … Nobody is going to listen to you about your economic plan or your ability to defend the nation if you’re going to deport their grandmother. … Mr. Trump has taken every problem we have had with Hispanics and poured gasoline on it.
March 2016: “If Trump is the standard bearer, it’s not about 2016, it’s about losing the heart and soul of the conservative movement. … So it’s no longer about winning the election for me, it’s trying to salvage a party that I love and conservatism as I know it.”
April 2016, on running as Trump’s VP: “That’s like buying a ticket on the Titanic.”
…
May 2016: “… I think Donald Trump is going to places where very few people have gone and I’m not going with him. Eating a taco is probably not going to fix the problems we have with Hispanics. I think embracing Donald Trump is embracing demographic death” (Ortiz 1-2).
[In Volume One of Obama’s third book,“A Promised Land,” Obama compared Lindsey Graham to] the guy in a heist movie “who double-crosses everyone to save his own skin” (Grady 3).
If they ever write the history of the phrase “too little, too late,” Lindsey Graham ought to get his own chapter.
…
This might be a good time to remember what Graham said in a tweet in May 2016, when Trump was still just running for president: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”
Trump did get nominated. Then he got elected. And Lindsey Graham, senator from South Carolina, supposedly a man of power and integrity, has spent the last four years running as fast as he could from what he knew was true.
He’s one of many Carolinians who helped enable Trump like bartenders serving a drunk.
…
Once, Graham was known as an independent thinker. But under Trump, Graham fulfilled his apparent destiny: He became one of those little birds that eats bugs off the back of a rhino.
For four years, he had a perfect view of what the rhino did to our country. And by the time he hopped off, it was too little, too late (Tomlinson 1).
… perhaps nothing has cemented Mr. Graham’s standing in Mr. Trump’s world as much as his performance at the divisive Supreme Court confirmation hearing for the future Justice Kavanaugh, who faced allegations of sexual assault from Christine Blasey Ford.
His finger-wagging, lip-curling performance — “Boy, you all want power — God, I hope you never get it,” he snarled — was lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.” But Mr. Trump loved it.
“Wow! Remind me not to make you mad,” the president told Mr. Graham on a private call, the senator said (Stolberg 2).
Senator Lindsey Graham, the blunt-speaking South Carolina Republican, vented to reporters on Thursday outside the hearing room where the Senate Judiciary Committee was hearing explosive testimony about sexual assault allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s embattled Supreme Court nominee.
Then he went back inside and really let loose.
“What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020,” Mr. Graham, red-faced and dropping all pretenses of legislative comity, yelled at his Democratic colleagues. “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.”
With those words, Mr. Graham all but cemented a slow-motion public political transformation over the past two years — from an anti-Trump, maverick Republican senator who often sought legislative compromise to Mr. Trump’s closest ally and most ardent defender.
As one of Mr. Trump’s rivals for the presidency in 2016, Mr. Graham called him “the world’s biggest jackass,” a “race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot” and a “kook” unfit to be president. For his part, Mr. Trump responded by calling Mr. Graham “an idiot” and “not as bright, honestly, as Rick Perry.”
But after Mr. Trump was inaugurated, Mr. Graham gradually changed his tune. He was spotted playing golf with Mr. Trump and chatting on the phone with the president. He has occasionally taken issue with Mr. Trump’s tweets, but has largely supported his agenda.
For longtime observers of politics in Washington, it has been a remarkable change, underscored recently by the death of Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was Mr. Graham’s best friend in Washington and one of the president’s fiercest critics.
There were those in both parties who might have once thought that Mr. Graham would assume Mr. McCain’s mantle as the straight-talking Republican in the Senate, challenging his own party and frequently working with Democratic colleagues to reach bipartisan compromises.
But Mr. Graham’s increasingly cozy relationship with Mr. Trump suggests that such expectations are misplaced.
During the first two years of the administration, Mr. Graham has supported the president’s plans to build up the military, end the Iran nuclear deal, cut taxes, eliminate regulations and reorient the nation’s foreign policy.
…
… on Thursday, Mr. Graham became the fiercest defender of the president’s choice to replace Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court in the face of explosive allegations of sexual misconduct.
For almost two hours, Mr. Graham — and the rest of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee — sat silently during the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, the research psychologist who has accused Judge Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school.
But when it came time for Mr. Kavanaugh to testify, Mr. Graham, who is a former Air Force lawyer, could no longer sit still.
With Mr. Kavanaugh sitting before him, Mr. Graham assailed the Democrats on the panel. He accused them of merely wanting to accumulate power. And he dared his Republican colleagues to vote against Mr. Kavanaugh’s nomination.
“If you vote no, you’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics,” Mr. Graham said, his voice rising in a way that is rarely seen in Senate hearings. Turning again to the Democrats to his left, he fumed: “You want this seat. I hope you never get it.”
That position is a reversal of sorts for Mr. Graham; throughout 2016, he supported Republican political tactics to block former President Barack Obama from filling a similar vacancy on the Supreme Court.
…
Mr. Graham is up for re-election in 2020, and there is certainly no political harm for him in binding himself to the president in one of the most Trump-friendly states in the country.
It is not yet known whether the dramatic and emotional performance will help persuade his Republican colleagues to vote for Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination in the face of the allegations by Dr. Blasey and two other women.
But one thing is clear: The unleashed anger is certain to be noticed by the president, who had pledged the evening before that he would watch the testimony of Mr. Kavanaugh and his accuser (Shear 1-2).
Works cited:
Blake, Aaron. “Lindsey Graham: Obama’s Worst Enemy — and Best Friend.” Washington Post, November 19, 2012. Net. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/t...
Grady, Constance. “In His New Memoir, Obama Defends — and Critiques — His Legacy.” Vox, November 19, 2020. Net. https://www.vox.com/culture/21573728/...
LoBianco, Tom. “Lindsey Graham Calls Out ‘Unhealthy’ Dislike of His Party toward Obama.” CNN, December 16, 2015. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/16/politi...
Ortiz, Gabe. “12 Times Lindsey Graham Rebuked Donald Trump’s Candidacy.” America’s Voice, May 24, 2016. Net. https://americasvoice.org/blog/12-tim...
Rappeport, Alan. “Lindsey Graham Enters White House Race with Emphasis on National Security.” New York Times, June 1, 2015. Net.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/us...
McCalmont, Lucy. “Graham: Obama's 'Back-to-Back' Lies.” Politico, February 3, 2014. Net. https://www.politico.com/story/2014/0...
Shear, Michael D. “Furious Lindsey Graham Calls Kavanaugh Hearing ‘the Most Unethical Sham’.” New York Times, September 27, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/us...
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay. “What Happened to Lindsey Graham? He’s Become a Conservative ‘Rock Star’.” New York Times, November 2, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/us...
Tomlinson, Tommy. “On My Mind: Lindsey Graham Tops the Wall of Shame of Trump Enablers from the Carolinas.” WFAE 90.7 Charlotte, January 11, 2021. Net. https://www.wfae.org/opinion/2021-01-...
Graham has been such an outspoken critic of Obama on Libya that the president called him out by name at last week's press conference. "If Sen. (John) McCain and Sen. Graham, and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me," Obama said after Graham and McCain criticized U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.
Graham's response? He very quickly released a full-throated statement saying Obama "failed as Commander in Chief before, during, and after the attack." Graham then upped the ante even more, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday to repeatedly accuse the Obama Administration of burying bad news before an election.
Graham, of course, is a top GOP voice on matters of foreign policy, so to see him jousting with the president isn't terribly surprising.
But it's hard not to look at these things in a political context, and Graham has lots to gain personally by becoming a high-profile critic of Obama.
After two election cycles in which tea party and conservative groups have taken down a number of incumbent senators and establishment candidates who were viewed as insufficiently conservative, Graham now finds himself as the RINO-du-jour for many of these groups in the 2014 primary season.
While Graham is a pretty down-the-line conservative on matters of foreign policy, socially and economically conservative groups have never been happy with him -- particularly coming from a reliably red state -- and Graham has irritated conservatives by voting for Obama's Supreme Court nominees on the Senate Judiciary Committee and working with Democrats on climate change.
…
[It becomes tougher to primary out] the guy you're trying to unseat [when he’s] on TV every day saying something hugely critical of the Democratic president (Blake 1-2).
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham is continuing his criticism of the president and the Obama administration, saying he [Obama] is on his way to earn another “lie of the year.”
“Last year he got the lie of the year award for saying, ‘If you like your health care, you can keep it.’ He’s going to have back-to-back titles by saying this,” Graham said Monday on Fox News’s “Cavuto.”
Graham’s latest attack — referencing Politifact declaring President Barack Obama’s health care comment “Lie of the Year in 2013 — follows the president’s pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly.
In the interview, Obama dismissed charges that they did not call it [the Benghazi killing] a “terror” attack to benefit his reelection campaign.
“That’s what folks like you are telling them. And what I’m saying is, that is inaccurate,” Obama said. “We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time. The notion that we would hide the ball for political purposes when a week later we all said in fact there was a terrorist attack taking place and the day after I said it was an act of terror, that wouldn’t be a very good cover-up.”
However, Graham said the American people were misled and that Benghazi isn’t a story pushed by Republicans or Fox News.
“This will catch up with him because they’re misleading us and the president is still misleading us. You would have to suspend disbelief, as someone famously said, to believe what the president said to Bill O’Reilly,” the senator said (McCalmont 1).
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina returned Monday [June 1, 2015] to the neighborhood where he was raised to announce that he is running for president, injecting a hawkish foreign policy voice into a crowded field of Republican contenders.
… Mr. Graham, 59, has said his fear that the world is “exploding in terror and violence” inspired him to run for the White House. He will try to convince voters that a platform of pragmatism at home and “security through strength” abroad is the formula to give Republicans the best chance to beat Hillary Rodham Clinton if she becomes the Democratic nominee (Rappeport 1).
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham hit back against the far right wing of his party a day after the CNN Republican debate in Las Vegas, saying Barack Obama “is my President” and calling the anger against him “unhealthy.”
“To those people who think Obama’s a Muslim who was born in Kenya, I lost you a long time ago,” Graham said Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day.” “There’s a dislike of Obama in my party that’s unhealthy, there was a dislike for President (George W.) Bush in the Democratic party that was unhealthy. He is my President.”
Graham said Obama called him Tuesday to talk about working with Iraq’s new prime minister, but the South Carolina senator was also candid about Obama’s handling of ISIS.
“I think he has screwed this up 10 ways to Sunday, but Bush made his fair share of mistakes too,” Graham said.
Graham accepted some credit for his one-liners and strong performance during Tuesday’s undercard debate, saying “I am hilarious.”
Throughout the night he attacked Donald Trump’s proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country and warned against pushing more Muslims into the arms of ISIS.
Graham has consistently been a standout performer on the undercard stage, but he has yet to earn enough support in the polls to force his way onto the main stage (LoBianco 1).
Since Trump’s Presidential campaign announcement last June, Sen. Graham has repeatedly warned about the dangers Trump poses not only to the Republican Party, but America as a whole:
July 2015: “I think [Donald Trump is] uninformed about the situation regarding the illegal immigrant population. I think he has hijacked the debate. I think he is a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican party with the Hispanic community and we need to push back.”
August 2015:“Well, Donald Trump’s plan on immigration is stupid. … You’re not going to get 11 million people out of this country. That’s just not practical, that’s going to kill the Republican Party. It’s self-deportation on steroids.”
…
December 2015: “You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell. He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. … He’s the ISIL man of the year.”
December 2015: “I believe Donald Trump is destroying the Republican chances to win an election that we can’t afford to lose. I believe we’re losing the Hispanic vote because they think we don’t like them…
January 2016, on choosing between Trump and Cruz: “It’s like being shot or poisoned. What does it really matter?”
March 2016: “The bottom line is that I believe Donald Trump would be an absolute, utter disaster for the Republican Party, destroy conservatism as we know it. … Nobody is going to listen to you about your economic plan or your ability to defend the nation if you’re going to deport their grandmother. … Mr. Trump has taken every problem we have had with Hispanics and poured gasoline on it.
March 2016: “If Trump is the standard bearer, it’s not about 2016, it’s about losing the heart and soul of the conservative movement. … So it’s no longer about winning the election for me, it’s trying to salvage a party that I love and conservatism as I know it.”
April 2016, on running as Trump’s VP: “That’s like buying a ticket on the Titanic.”
…
May 2016: “… I think Donald Trump is going to places where very few people have gone and I’m not going with him. Eating a taco is probably not going to fix the problems we have with Hispanics. I think embracing Donald Trump is embracing demographic death” (Ortiz 1-2).
[In Volume One of Obama’s third book,“A Promised Land,” Obama compared Lindsey Graham to] the guy in a heist movie “who double-crosses everyone to save his own skin” (Grady 3).
If they ever write the history of the phrase “too little, too late,” Lindsey Graham ought to get his own chapter.
…
This might be a good time to remember what Graham said in a tweet in May 2016, when Trump was still just running for president: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”
Trump did get nominated. Then he got elected. And Lindsey Graham, senator from South Carolina, supposedly a man of power and integrity, has spent the last four years running as fast as he could from what he knew was true.
He’s one of many Carolinians who helped enable Trump like bartenders serving a drunk.
…
Once, Graham was known as an independent thinker. But under Trump, Graham fulfilled his apparent destiny: He became one of those little birds that eats bugs off the back of a rhino.
For four years, he had a perfect view of what the rhino did to our country. And by the time he hopped off, it was too little, too late (Tomlinson 1).
… perhaps nothing has cemented Mr. Graham’s standing in Mr. Trump’s world as much as his performance at the divisive Supreme Court confirmation hearing for the future Justice Kavanaugh, who faced allegations of sexual assault from Christine Blasey Ford.
His finger-wagging, lip-curling performance — “Boy, you all want power — God, I hope you never get it,” he snarled — was lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.” But Mr. Trump loved it.
“Wow! Remind me not to make you mad,” the president told Mr. Graham on a private call, the senator said (Stolberg 2).
Senator Lindsey Graham, the blunt-speaking South Carolina Republican, vented to reporters on Thursday outside the hearing room where the Senate Judiciary Committee was hearing explosive testimony about sexual assault allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s embattled Supreme Court nominee.
Then he went back inside and really let loose.
“What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020,” Mr. Graham, red-faced and dropping all pretenses of legislative comity, yelled at his Democratic colleagues. “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.”
With those words, Mr. Graham all but cemented a slow-motion public political transformation over the past two years — from an anti-Trump, maverick Republican senator who often sought legislative compromise to Mr. Trump’s closest ally and most ardent defender.
As one of Mr. Trump’s rivals for the presidency in 2016, Mr. Graham called him “the world’s biggest jackass,” a “race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot” and a “kook” unfit to be president. For his part, Mr. Trump responded by calling Mr. Graham “an idiot” and “not as bright, honestly, as Rick Perry.”
But after Mr. Trump was inaugurated, Mr. Graham gradually changed his tune. He was spotted playing golf with Mr. Trump and chatting on the phone with the president. He has occasionally taken issue with Mr. Trump’s tweets, but has largely supported his agenda.
For longtime observers of politics in Washington, it has been a remarkable change, underscored recently by the death of Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was Mr. Graham’s best friend in Washington and one of the president’s fiercest critics.
There were those in both parties who might have once thought that Mr. Graham would assume Mr. McCain’s mantle as the straight-talking Republican in the Senate, challenging his own party and frequently working with Democratic colleagues to reach bipartisan compromises.
But Mr. Graham’s increasingly cozy relationship with Mr. Trump suggests that such expectations are misplaced.
During the first two years of the administration, Mr. Graham has supported the president’s plans to build up the military, end the Iran nuclear deal, cut taxes, eliminate regulations and reorient the nation’s foreign policy.
…
… on Thursday, Mr. Graham became the fiercest defender of the president’s choice to replace Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court in the face of explosive allegations of sexual misconduct.
For almost two hours, Mr. Graham — and the rest of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee — sat silently during the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, the research psychologist who has accused Judge Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school.
But when it came time for Mr. Kavanaugh to testify, Mr. Graham, who is a former Air Force lawyer, could no longer sit still.
With Mr. Kavanaugh sitting before him, Mr. Graham assailed the Democrats on the panel. He accused them of merely wanting to accumulate power. And he dared his Republican colleagues to vote against Mr. Kavanaugh’s nomination.
“If you vote no, you’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics,” Mr. Graham said, his voice rising in a way that is rarely seen in Senate hearings. Turning again to the Democrats to his left, he fumed: “You want this seat. I hope you never get it.”
That position is a reversal of sorts for Mr. Graham; throughout 2016, he supported Republican political tactics to block former President Barack Obama from filling a similar vacancy on the Supreme Court.
…
Mr. Graham is up for re-election in 2020, and there is certainly no political harm for him in binding himself to the president in one of the most Trump-friendly states in the country.
It is not yet known whether the dramatic and emotional performance will help persuade his Republican colleagues to vote for Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination in the face of the allegations by Dr. Blasey and two other women.
But one thing is clear: The unleashed anger is certain to be noticed by the president, who had pledged the evening before that he would watch the testimony of Mr. Kavanaugh and his accuser (Shear 1-2).
Works cited:
Blake, Aaron. “Lindsey Graham: Obama’s Worst Enemy — and Best Friend.” Washington Post, November 19, 2012. Net. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/t...
Grady, Constance. “In His New Memoir, Obama Defends — and Critiques — His Legacy.” Vox, November 19, 2020. Net. https://www.vox.com/culture/21573728/...
LoBianco, Tom. “Lindsey Graham Calls Out ‘Unhealthy’ Dislike of His Party toward Obama.” CNN, December 16, 2015. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/16/politi...
Ortiz, Gabe. “12 Times Lindsey Graham Rebuked Donald Trump’s Candidacy.” America’s Voice, May 24, 2016. Net. https://americasvoice.org/blog/12-tim...
Rappeport, Alan. “Lindsey Graham Enters White House Race with Emphasis on National Security.” New York Times, June 1, 2015. Net.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/us...
McCalmont, Lucy. “Graham: Obama's 'Back-to-Back' Lies.” Politico, February 3, 2014. Net. https://www.politico.com/story/2014/0...
Shear, Michael D. “Furious Lindsey Graham Calls Kavanaugh Hearing ‘the Most Unethical Sham’.” New York Times, September 27, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/us...
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay. “What Happened to Lindsey Graham? He’s Become a Conservative ‘Rock Star’.” New York Times, November 2, 2018. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/us...
Tomlinson, Tommy. “On My Mind: Lindsey Graham Tops the Wall of Shame of Trump Enablers from the Carolinas.” WFAE 90.7 Charlotte, January 11, 2021. Net. https://www.wfae.org/opinion/2021-01-...
April 17, 2022
The Amoralists -- Lindsey Graham -- Part Two -- Where Senators Used To Be
The one thing I've learned from being John McCain's friend, you can survive that dynamic if you're really committed to what you believe in and don't sell people short. I have been in so many scrapes with John, whether it be detainee policy, campaign finance reform, the Gang of 14 or immigration and the war. What allowed John to go from all of those issues to being the nominee [is] just a sense of purpose and a belief in your position, and a core belief [that] this is the best for the country. And those beliefs are tested the most when you argue with your friends. The easiest thing in politics is to beat on your political foes, because there's a reward from your base. The hardest thing -- ask [Sen.] Joe Lieberman [I-Conn.] -- in politics is to tell that base of yours for many years, "I can't help you here." … (Interview 2).
In a campaign that needs all the laughs it can get, much of the mirth among [2008] Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s band of travelers is generated by his close friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham.
As often as not recently, Graham has been the warm-up act for McCain at campaign rallies in battleground states, and the South Carolina Republican comes out with laughers, like this one in talking about McCain’s wife, Cindy:
“She is classy, she is beautiful, she is smart, she owns a beer distributorship. For a Navy guy, John McCain has hit the mother lode.”
In Durango, Colorado, in an event on a high school football field, Graham pointed to his own lack of athletic prowess when he was growing up.
“You know, I played high school football for four years -- first time I’ve ever been on the field,” he said.
And when the crowd cheered him on in Zanesville, Ohio, he said: “I didn’t realize how big I was in Ohio. Yeah, I’ve gained 20 pounds on this campaign. I’m getting bigger every day.”
Graham is able to hang around McCain so much in the days leading up to Election Day November 4 because he is coasting along in his bid for a new six-year term against a weak Democratic opponent, Bob Conley.
So instead of campaigning for himself in South Carolina, Graham over the past week has been at McCain’s side at rallies in Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa and North Carolina.
Cindy McCain describes Graham as McCain’s best friend and McCain himself in the past has affectionately introduced him as “that little jerk” and teased him about his Southern drawl.
“He’s goofy,” said McCain senior adviser Nicolle Wallace. “He just lights up McCain’s spirit with his performance on the trail and his mood.”
In a campaign that is basically a family feud among three members of the clubby 100-member U.S. Senate -- McCain of Arizona versus Democrats Barack Obama of Illinois and Joe Biden of Delaware -- Graham is enjoying taking shots at his opponents on the other side of the aisle.
He takes special pleasure in skewering “Joe the Biden” for the loquacious Biden’s tendency to talk himself into trouble, such as his recent comment that Obama would be bound to face an international crisis early in his presidency, which gave McCain a new line of attack.
“He’s the sound-bite machine that keeps on giving,” Graham says. “Keep it up, Joe!”
And on Obama himself: “You’ve seen his book, ‘The Audacity of Hope?’ He’s got a sequel coming out: ‘The Times I Stood Up To The Left.’ It’s a short read.”
…
McCain had an ally in Graham when they tried to get Republicans to support an immigration deal in 2007 that triggered a conservative revolt and almost derailed McCain’s presidential bid.
“I have been hanging around this guy for about 10 years now,” Graham said. “I have been into every fight he’s got me involved in Washington, and I’ve got a few scars to show for it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way” (Holland 1-2).
By the 2008 campaign, the two [Graham and McCain] were inseparable. Graham found a role as the court jester who kept things light even when there seemed little to laugh about.
He remained by the candidate’s side on election night. The following day, Graham stayed with the McCains at their ranch outside Sedona, Ariz.
A month later, Graham flew with McCain to the Chicago campaign headquarters of President-elect Obama to discuss issues like immigration and detainee policy and how the two of them might be able to work with the new administration. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was there. Graham and Emanuel each served as their candidates’ negotiators for the presidential debates, and Graham recalled: “We were able to knock this thing out pretty quickly. And I really respected him because if he told me he’d do something, he would.” That day in Chicago, according to both men, Emanuel pulled Graham aside and expressed admiration for how he had stuck by his friend, especially during the bleakest moments. It became immediately apparent that the White House chief of staff and Graham would be doing business, with or without McCain.
Whenever Graham speaks fondly of other legislators, Ted Kennedy’s name invariably comes up. He admired the Massachusetts senator’s energy and passion, but above all his practicality. According to Graham, Kennedy claimed that, while working behind the scenes to garner support from fellow senators across the aisle, he would publicly lambaste the same Republicans for one reason or another, so that back home they would not be tarred as bedfellows of the liberal icon.
A similar element of kabuki theater attends Graham’s relationship with the Obama administration. …
Certain elements of Graham’s dance routine with the White House are available for public viewing. Graham has already signaled that he would be receptive to confirming Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court this summer. First, however, he will extract his pound of flesh. “I want to make the case that she’s a liberal,” he told me. …
On other matters, Graham has unabashedly supported the Obama administration. He credits the president for his attentiveness to Pakistan, for sending more troops to Afghanistan and for recently declaring a moratorium on deep-water drilling while remaining open to future domestic oil exploration. These, of course, are among the issues on which Obama has disappointed his liberal supporters. I asked Graham if he felt that he had taken the full measure of the president. “No, I don’t,” he said. “I got comfortable with Bush. I’m not comfortable with Obama.”
… “some people, when it comes to the tough decisions, back away.” … (Draper 2).
So the immigration comprehensive bill was a big moment a couple years ago.
That's where [Sens.] Ted Kennedy [D-Mass.], Lindsey Graham, Jon Kyl [R-Ariz.] and Ken Salazar [D-Colo.], along with Secretary [of Commerce Carlos] Gutierrez and [Secretary of Homeland Security Michael] Chertoff sit in a room for about three months going over every line of a bill, giving and taking like you thought the ninth-grade civics class would be. It was a bill where the senators actually get involved. We probably had 30, 40 senators coming in and out of those meetings.
Sen. Obama was one of those senators. He'd come in at times and make a contribution. We were at the very last part of the negotiations. He shows up. He's not a regular participant, but he shows up at the end, and he's got three things he wants or two things he wants. Jon Kyl didn't want to give it to him; I did. It was some change; I can't remember what it was. But I wanted him in, because I know he's somebody that people pay attention to. We needed every vote we could get, and we needed all the people we could to push this ball, because immigration's tough. The left hated the bill because of the labor unions. Labor unions hated the temporary worker program. They didn't want a temporary worker program to allow outside people to come in and work. The right didn't like the path to citizenship, the ability of allowing people to come out of the shadows and have a legal status. …
So we get on the floor. You get some people doing the union bidding, trying to undo the temporary worker program. They reduce the numbers in half, but we could live with it, fix it in conference. So Sen. Obama started voting in a way to undercut the temporary worker program. I went to him at least once and said: "We can't do this. This will destroy the deal." …
Finally it all blew up. Not only had he started voting the wrong way to undo the deal, he offered an amendment himself that would have sunsetted the temporary worker program after five years. What do you go tell the people on your side, the business people who need access to labor, "Your program goes away after five years"? …
That just made me very, very mad. ... I thought instead of sticking to the deal, he gave in to pressure from the left, and the pressure from the left and right was enormous. So that did not sit well with me (Interview 4).
… Obama’s performance in 2008 left Graham impressed — “I thought this guy did a masterful job of beating Clinton, feinting to the left, coming back to the middle” — and hopeful that the new president would depart from the intransigence of the previous one. (“Bush made it hard for anybody to work with him,” Graham told me.) In Chicago, Obama and Graham agreed to stay in touch about the matter of detained suspected terrorists. Graham was therefore chagrined to read a couple of weeks later that Obama intended to close the Guantánamo Bay prison without having first established an alternative facility. Graham recalls telling Rahm Emanuel: “This is a mistake. You need to get people on board for why you should close it.”
…
Two weeks ago, I found Graham in his office contemplating a coming scheduled visit to the White House to explore potential areas of agreement on energy and climate legislation.
To him, consensus building is a game of inches, and the meeting (which was later postponed) would likely amount to no more and no less than a positive increment. “I fully understand 70 to 80 percent of my [Republican] conference is going to reject any idea of putting a price on carbon anywhere,” he told me. For that matter, he said, “the environmental groups are great to deal with — but they think the planet’s gonna melt in five years. I don’t. I think carbon pollution, all things considered, is bad for human beings. But it’s not what I think of when I wake up in the morning. . . . I offer myself as a bridge, and I take a beating for that, and I get rewarded for that. It’s a business. Politically, it is who I am now. There’s no use for me to try to play another game” (Draper 5-6).
In years past, Graham’s deal-making forays typically featured his close friend, Senator John McCain of Arizona, as the front man. Nowadays McCain has shucked his maverick ways in order to court his state’s G.O.P. primary voters, while Graham’s reflexive displays of bipartisanship have made him something of a scourge among South Carolina Tea Partiers. Harry Kibler fingered Graham as major prey in Kibler’s “RINO hunt” (Republicans in Name Only). The South Carolina chapter of Resist.net warns constituents that Graham “is up to his old reach-across-the-aisle tricks again!” Among the conservative activists who have called for censuring Graham as a quisling of the right is the state’s G.O.P. gubernatorial nominee and Tea Party favorite, Nikki Haley.
“Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at,” Graham said as Cato drove him to the city of Greenwood, where he was to give a commencement address at Lander University later that morning. …
In a previous conversation, Graham told me: “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.” Now he said, in a tone of casual lament: “We don’t have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.” Chortling, he added, “Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today.”
Graham is now accustomed to sporadic heckling and the occasional icy stare in his native state, where he was re-elected to a second term in 2008 by a 15-point margin. His give-and-take brand of conservatism has never been an obvious fit in blood-red South Carolina, and even more so during the past Tea-Party-agitated year. ...
The White House logs do not record visits paid by U.S. senators. According to his office’s records, however, Lindsey Graham has been to the West Wing 19 times since Barack Obama became president. When I asked the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, if any other Republican senator was so frequent a guest, he thought for a moment before responding, rather doubtfully, “Maybe Susan Collins.”
Emanuel went on to say: “He’s willing to work on more things than the others. Lindsey, to his credit, has a small-government vision that’s out of fashion with his party, which stands for no government. . . . He’s one of the last big voices to give that vision intellectual energy.”
…
[Graham characterized] the president of the United States as “a good role model” or “an American just as much as anybody else.” Graham made both comments on “Meet the Press” in March. His greater transgression, however, has been his willingness — even eagerness — to seek common ground with Democrats. For his sins, Glenn Beck termed the senator Obama Lite, while Rush Limbaugh labeled him Lindsey Grahamnesty. Less tame are the blogosphere monikers, like “Miss Lindsey,” that play off of Graham’s never-married status. During a South Carolina Tea Party rally this spring, one speaker created an uproar by postulating that Graham supported a guest-worker program out of fear that the Democrats might otherwise expose his homosexuality. (Graham smirked when I brought this up. “Like maybe I’m having a clandestine affair with Ricky Martin,” he said. “I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men — I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge — but I ain’t available. I ain’t gay. Sorry.”)
Graham feels a strong personal connection to a handful of issues. Saving Social Security from financial collapse by reforming its benefit structure is one: as a college student, he and his teenage sister depended on their recently deceased parents’ Social Security benefits.
Additionally, devising a framework for where and how to adjudicate cases of suspected terrorism has natural appeal to Graham, who as a judge advocate general has served as a military lawyer for the past 25 years.
Otherwise, it’s a mix of intellectual curiosity, statesmanship, opportunism and maybe even loneliness that compels Lindsey Graham — who admits, “I don’t have a life” — to thrust himself into the innermost core of American policy making.
…
“I think I’m where senators used to be,” Graham said one evening at a German restaurant on Capitol Hill. “I think I’m where they were before 24/7 news. It gets a little old after a while trying to explain yourself. I don’t think I’m overly complicated. I’m unique, but I’m not complicated.”
The senator — who stripped off his jacket and tie even before sitting down — leaned over his potato pancake, and his customarily glazed eyes widened just a bit. “My God, look what I’m involved in!” he said. “By default, if for no other reason. How do you close Gitmo without working with me now? How do you do immigration?” He added: “What if I walked away from climate change tomorrow? . . . You know, all politicians like to be thought of in their own mind as somebody special. I’m past that now. I’m a little worried. This is not healthy for the country. It’s really not.”
… A few days earlier, he told me that his party’s unwillingness to work with the Obama administration amounted to an “opportunity” for him to be the Hill’s deal-maker in chief, adding with a laugh, “I mean, I’m not having to push through people to get to the front of the line” (Draper 2-4).
Works cited:
Draper, Robert. “Lindsey Graham, This Year’s Maverick.” New York Times, July 1, 2010. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/ma...
Holland, Steve. “McCain's Master of Mirth, Lindsey Graham.” Reuters, October 30, 2008. Net. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...
“Interview: Sen. Lindsey Graham.” PBS, October 14, 2008. Net. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...
In a campaign that needs all the laughs it can get, much of the mirth among [2008] Republican presidential nominee John McCain’s band of travelers is generated by his close friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham.
As often as not recently, Graham has been the warm-up act for McCain at campaign rallies in battleground states, and the South Carolina Republican comes out with laughers, like this one in talking about McCain’s wife, Cindy:
“She is classy, she is beautiful, she is smart, she owns a beer distributorship. For a Navy guy, John McCain has hit the mother lode.”
In Durango, Colorado, in an event on a high school football field, Graham pointed to his own lack of athletic prowess when he was growing up.
“You know, I played high school football for four years -- first time I’ve ever been on the field,” he said.
And when the crowd cheered him on in Zanesville, Ohio, he said: “I didn’t realize how big I was in Ohio. Yeah, I’ve gained 20 pounds on this campaign. I’m getting bigger every day.”
Graham is able to hang around McCain so much in the days leading up to Election Day November 4 because he is coasting along in his bid for a new six-year term against a weak Democratic opponent, Bob Conley.
So instead of campaigning for himself in South Carolina, Graham over the past week has been at McCain’s side at rallies in Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa and North Carolina.
Cindy McCain describes Graham as McCain’s best friend and McCain himself in the past has affectionately introduced him as “that little jerk” and teased him about his Southern drawl.
“He’s goofy,” said McCain senior adviser Nicolle Wallace. “He just lights up McCain’s spirit with his performance on the trail and his mood.”
In a campaign that is basically a family feud among three members of the clubby 100-member U.S. Senate -- McCain of Arizona versus Democrats Barack Obama of Illinois and Joe Biden of Delaware -- Graham is enjoying taking shots at his opponents on the other side of the aisle.
He takes special pleasure in skewering “Joe the Biden” for the loquacious Biden’s tendency to talk himself into trouble, such as his recent comment that Obama would be bound to face an international crisis early in his presidency, which gave McCain a new line of attack.
“He’s the sound-bite machine that keeps on giving,” Graham says. “Keep it up, Joe!”
And on Obama himself: “You’ve seen his book, ‘The Audacity of Hope?’ He’s got a sequel coming out: ‘The Times I Stood Up To The Left.’ It’s a short read.”
…
McCain had an ally in Graham when they tried to get Republicans to support an immigration deal in 2007 that triggered a conservative revolt and almost derailed McCain’s presidential bid.
“I have been hanging around this guy for about 10 years now,” Graham said. “I have been into every fight he’s got me involved in Washington, and I’ve got a few scars to show for it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way” (Holland 1-2).
By the 2008 campaign, the two [Graham and McCain] were inseparable. Graham found a role as the court jester who kept things light even when there seemed little to laugh about.
He remained by the candidate’s side on election night. The following day, Graham stayed with the McCains at their ranch outside Sedona, Ariz.
A month later, Graham flew with McCain to the Chicago campaign headquarters of President-elect Obama to discuss issues like immigration and detainee policy and how the two of them might be able to work with the new administration. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was there. Graham and Emanuel each served as their candidates’ negotiators for the presidential debates, and Graham recalled: “We were able to knock this thing out pretty quickly. And I really respected him because if he told me he’d do something, he would.” That day in Chicago, according to both men, Emanuel pulled Graham aside and expressed admiration for how he had stuck by his friend, especially during the bleakest moments. It became immediately apparent that the White House chief of staff and Graham would be doing business, with or without McCain.
Whenever Graham speaks fondly of other legislators, Ted Kennedy’s name invariably comes up. He admired the Massachusetts senator’s energy and passion, but above all his practicality. According to Graham, Kennedy claimed that, while working behind the scenes to garner support from fellow senators across the aisle, he would publicly lambaste the same Republicans for one reason or another, so that back home they would not be tarred as bedfellows of the liberal icon.
A similar element of kabuki theater attends Graham’s relationship with the Obama administration. …
Certain elements of Graham’s dance routine with the White House are available for public viewing. Graham has already signaled that he would be receptive to confirming Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court this summer. First, however, he will extract his pound of flesh. “I want to make the case that she’s a liberal,” he told me. …
On other matters, Graham has unabashedly supported the Obama administration. He credits the president for his attentiveness to Pakistan, for sending more troops to Afghanistan and for recently declaring a moratorium on deep-water drilling while remaining open to future domestic oil exploration. These, of course, are among the issues on which Obama has disappointed his liberal supporters. I asked Graham if he felt that he had taken the full measure of the president. “No, I don’t,” he said. “I got comfortable with Bush. I’m not comfortable with Obama.”
… “some people, when it comes to the tough decisions, back away.” … (Draper 2).
So the immigration comprehensive bill was a big moment a couple years ago.
That's where [Sens.] Ted Kennedy [D-Mass.], Lindsey Graham, Jon Kyl [R-Ariz.] and Ken Salazar [D-Colo.], along with Secretary [of Commerce Carlos] Gutierrez and [Secretary of Homeland Security Michael] Chertoff sit in a room for about three months going over every line of a bill, giving and taking like you thought the ninth-grade civics class would be. It was a bill where the senators actually get involved. We probably had 30, 40 senators coming in and out of those meetings.
Sen. Obama was one of those senators. He'd come in at times and make a contribution. We were at the very last part of the negotiations. He shows up. He's not a regular participant, but he shows up at the end, and he's got three things he wants or two things he wants. Jon Kyl didn't want to give it to him; I did. It was some change; I can't remember what it was. But I wanted him in, because I know he's somebody that people pay attention to. We needed every vote we could get, and we needed all the people we could to push this ball, because immigration's tough. The left hated the bill because of the labor unions. Labor unions hated the temporary worker program. They didn't want a temporary worker program to allow outside people to come in and work. The right didn't like the path to citizenship, the ability of allowing people to come out of the shadows and have a legal status. …
So we get on the floor. You get some people doing the union bidding, trying to undo the temporary worker program. They reduce the numbers in half, but we could live with it, fix it in conference. So Sen. Obama started voting in a way to undercut the temporary worker program. I went to him at least once and said: "We can't do this. This will destroy the deal." …
Finally it all blew up. Not only had he started voting the wrong way to undo the deal, he offered an amendment himself that would have sunsetted the temporary worker program after five years. What do you go tell the people on your side, the business people who need access to labor, "Your program goes away after five years"? …
That just made me very, very mad. ... I thought instead of sticking to the deal, he gave in to pressure from the left, and the pressure from the left and right was enormous. So that did not sit well with me (Interview 4).
… Obama’s performance in 2008 left Graham impressed — “I thought this guy did a masterful job of beating Clinton, feinting to the left, coming back to the middle” — and hopeful that the new president would depart from the intransigence of the previous one. (“Bush made it hard for anybody to work with him,” Graham told me.) In Chicago, Obama and Graham agreed to stay in touch about the matter of detained suspected terrorists. Graham was therefore chagrined to read a couple of weeks later that Obama intended to close the Guantánamo Bay prison without having first established an alternative facility. Graham recalls telling Rahm Emanuel: “This is a mistake. You need to get people on board for why you should close it.”
…
Two weeks ago, I found Graham in his office contemplating a coming scheduled visit to the White House to explore potential areas of agreement on energy and climate legislation.
To him, consensus building is a game of inches, and the meeting (which was later postponed) would likely amount to no more and no less than a positive increment. “I fully understand 70 to 80 percent of my [Republican] conference is going to reject any idea of putting a price on carbon anywhere,” he told me. For that matter, he said, “the environmental groups are great to deal with — but they think the planet’s gonna melt in five years. I don’t. I think carbon pollution, all things considered, is bad for human beings. But it’s not what I think of when I wake up in the morning. . . . I offer myself as a bridge, and I take a beating for that, and I get rewarded for that. It’s a business. Politically, it is who I am now. There’s no use for me to try to play another game” (Draper 5-6).
In years past, Graham’s deal-making forays typically featured his close friend, Senator John McCain of Arizona, as the front man. Nowadays McCain has shucked his maverick ways in order to court his state’s G.O.P. primary voters, while Graham’s reflexive displays of bipartisanship have made him something of a scourge among South Carolina Tea Partiers. Harry Kibler fingered Graham as major prey in Kibler’s “RINO hunt” (Republicans in Name Only). The South Carolina chapter of Resist.net warns constituents that Graham “is up to his old reach-across-the-aisle tricks again!” Among the conservative activists who have called for censuring Graham as a quisling of the right is the state’s G.O.P. gubernatorial nominee and Tea Party favorite, Nikki Haley.
“Everything I’m doing now in terms of talking about climate, talking about immigration, talking about Gitmo is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement’s at,” Graham said as Cato drove him to the city of Greenwood, where he was to give a commencement address at Lander University later that morning. …
In a previous conversation, Graham told me: “The problem with the Tea Party, I think it’s just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out.” Now he said, in a tone of casual lament: “We don’t have a lot of Reagan-type leaders in our party. Remember Ronald Reagan Democrats? I want a Republican that can attract Democrats.” Chortling, he added, “Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today.”
Graham is now accustomed to sporadic heckling and the occasional icy stare in his native state, where he was re-elected to a second term in 2008 by a 15-point margin. His give-and-take brand of conservatism has never been an obvious fit in blood-red South Carolina, and even more so during the past Tea-Party-agitated year. ...
The White House logs do not record visits paid by U.S. senators. According to his office’s records, however, Lindsey Graham has been to the West Wing 19 times since Barack Obama became president. When I asked the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, if any other Republican senator was so frequent a guest, he thought for a moment before responding, rather doubtfully, “Maybe Susan Collins.”
Emanuel went on to say: “He’s willing to work on more things than the others. Lindsey, to his credit, has a small-government vision that’s out of fashion with his party, which stands for no government. . . . He’s one of the last big voices to give that vision intellectual energy.”
…
[Graham characterized] the president of the United States as “a good role model” or “an American just as much as anybody else.” Graham made both comments on “Meet the Press” in March. His greater transgression, however, has been his willingness — even eagerness — to seek common ground with Democrats. For his sins, Glenn Beck termed the senator Obama Lite, while Rush Limbaugh labeled him Lindsey Grahamnesty. Less tame are the blogosphere monikers, like “Miss Lindsey,” that play off of Graham’s never-married status. During a South Carolina Tea Party rally this spring, one speaker created an uproar by postulating that Graham supported a guest-worker program out of fear that the Democrats might otherwise expose his homosexuality. (Graham smirked when I brought this up. “Like maybe I’m having a clandestine affair with Ricky Martin,” he said. “I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men — I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge — but I ain’t available. I ain’t gay. Sorry.”)
Graham feels a strong personal connection to a handful of issues. Saving Social Security from financial collapse by reforming its benefit structure is one: as a college student, he and his teenage sister depended on their recently deceased parents’ Social Security benefits.
Additionally, devising a framework for where and how to adjudicate cases of suspected terrorism has natural appeal to Graham, who as a judge advocate general has served as a military lawyer for the past 25 years.
Otherwise, it’s a mix of intellectual curiosity, statesmanship, opportunism and maybe even loneliness that compels Lindsey Graham — who admits, “I don’t have a life” — to thrust himself into the innermost core of American policy making.
…
“I think I’m where senators used to be,” Graham said one evening at a German restaurant on Capitol Hill. “I think I’m where they were before 24/7 news. It gets a little old after a while trying to explain yourself. I don’t think I’m overly complicated. I’m unique, but I’m not complicated.”
The senator — who stripped off his jacket and tie even before sitting down — leaned over his potato pancake, and his customarily glazed eyes widened just a bit. “My God, look what I’m involved in!” he said. “By default, if for no other reason. How do you close Gitmo without working with me now? How do you do immigration?” He added: “What if I walked away from climate change tomorrow? . . . You know, all politicians like to be thought of in their own mind as somebody special. I’m past that now. I’m a little worried. This is not healthy for the country. It’s really not.”
… A few days earlier, he told me that his party’s unwillingness to work with the Obama administration amounted to an “opportunity” for him to be the Hill’s deal-maker in chief, adding with a laugh, “I mean, I’m not having to push through people to get to the front of the line” (Draper 2-4).
Works cited:
Draper, Robert. “Lindsey Graham, This Year’s Maverick.” New York Times, July 1, 2010. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/ma...
Holland, Steve. “McCain's Master of Mirth, Lindsey Graham.” Reuters, October 30, 2008. Net. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...
“Interview: Sen. Lindsey Graham.” PBS, October 14, 2008. Net. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...
April 14, 2022
The Amoralists -- Lindsey Graham -- Part One -- Reach-across-the-Aisle Moderate
Lindsey Olin Graham was born in Central, South Carolina, where his parents, Millie (Walters) and Florence James "F.J." Graham, ran a restaurant/bar/pool hall/liquor store, the Sanitary Cafe. His family is of Scots-Irish descent. After graduating from D. W. Daniel High School, Graham became the first member of his family to attend college, and joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. When he was 21, his mother died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma, aged 52, and his father died 15 months later of a heart attack, aged 69. Because his then-13-year-old sister was left orphaned, the service allowed Graham to attend the University of South Carolina in Columbus so he could remain near home as his sister's legal guardian. During his studies, he became a member of the Pi Kappa Phi social fraternity.
He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a B.A. in psychology in 1977, and from the University of South Carolina School of Law with a J.D. in 1981 (Lindsey 2).
Friends and relatives credit Graham's plain speaking and wry humor to his father, F.J. Graham -- the proprietor of the oddly named Sanitary Cafe, a combination restaurant-bar-liquor store-pool hall in Central, S.C. (pop. 2,000). Lindsey's mother, Millie, was a savvy businesswoman who cooked hamburgers and served Cokes behind the counter while F.J. -- for Florence James -- generally presided over things. The elder Graham, a barrel-chested man with a crew cut and a dry wit, was known around town as "the Dude."
"My dad was a hoot," Graham says. "Being 5 foot 7 inches and full of a mouth, you got to really stay on your toes. . . . This is a textile town. My dad never finished high school and neither did my mom. And we had a restaurant/bar and later on he got a liquor store next door and a pool hall downstairs and as a young guy I ran the pool hall. I've heard every story and then some. But at 3 o'clock in the afternoon the first shift would get off from the mill and people would come in just full of cotton and dust and they'd drink beer till midnight. And I've heard 'Satin Sheets to Lie On and Satin Pillows to Cry On' a thousand times."
Graham says he doesn't drink, probably because alcohol consumption has never held any exotic allure for him. "I've seen the bad side of drinking. I've seen a lot of drunks throwing up," he says. "A small-town community bar is what it was. I know what it's like to be thought of as the kid of the guy that owned the bar -- and everybody's so sanctimonious -- so I took all that stuff in stride. So it was a great place to learn about life. I had wives call up wanting to know if their husband's there and I'm answering the phone at 9 years of age. And I'd say, 'Well, he said he isn't here.' So I learned the hard way about a little bit of diplomacy. But it was a great upbringing."
…
You assume everything's going to be like Ozzie and Harriet," Graham says. "That doesn't mean it's going to happen that way. So here I've got a teenager on my hands. She's turned out great in spite of me. I was probably a nut. I never let her date. I smelled her clothes if she smoked. I listened in on her phone calls. I was probably pressing too hard, just 'cause I felt such responsibility for her. I paid for her college and I did all the financial deals when I got in the Air Force. I thought that was my job and I felt very happy to have done it. She is the light of my life."
…
After obtaining his law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1981, he joined the Air Force's Judge Advocate General staff, spending four years as a prosecutor and defense attorney in Europe.
"One, he was very intelligent, and two, he understands people," says Air Force Maj. Gen. Bryan Hawley, who was chief trial judge for Europe when he saw Capt. Graham work in courts-martial. "He has more common sense than I do."
In 1984, defending an Air Force pilot accused of marijuana use, Graham attracted national attention when he was featured in a CBS "60 Minutes" report that exposed the Air Force's faulty drug-testing procedures.
Graham recalls his Air Force tour as terrific fun for a young bachelor swinging his way through Paris and Rome. "Don't believe anything anybody tells you about my Air Force exploits," jokes Graham, still unhitched and a roommate of Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.), another single guy. "I was very heterosexual, that's all you need to know."
He returned home to the more sedate life of a small-town trial lawyer in Seneca amid the cotton mills of western South Carolina (Grove 2-4).
In 1992, Graham was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives from the 2nd district, in Oconee County. He defeated Democratic incumbent Lowell W. Ross by 60% to 40% and served one term, from 1993 to 1995.
In 1994, 20-year incumbent Democratic U.S. Congressman Butler Derrick of South Carolina's northwestern-based 3rd congressional district decided to retire. Graham ran to succeed him and, with Republican U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond campaigning on his behalf, won the Republican primary with 52% of the vote, defeating Bob Cantrell (33%) and Ed Allgood (15%). In the general election, Graham defeated Democratic State Senator James Bryan Jr., 60% to 40%. As a part of that year's Republican Revolution, Graham became the first Republican to represent the district since 1877.
In 1996, he was challenged by Debbie Dorn, the niece of Butler Derrick and daughter of Derrick's predecessor, 13-term Democratic Congressman William Jennings Bryan Dorn. Graham was reelected, defeating Dorn 60% to 40% (Lindsey 3)
Graham -- whose middle-aged spread and laid-back manner cushion knifelike intelligence and a sizzling ambition -- has been something of a firebrand during his career on Capitol Hill. He took part in last year's abortive coup against House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), staged by Young Turks exasperated with Gingrich's tendency to unilaterally compromise with the White House. More recently, he stood on the House floor and scolded a deeply annoyed Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the pork-rich Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, about the evils of budget-busting (Grove 5).
January 26, 1998
"I want you to listen to me. I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. I never told a single person to lie, not a single time, never," an angry President Clinton declares to an invited media audience at the White House.
…
August 17, 1998
Bill Clinton testifies in the grand jury, acknowledging "inappropriate intimate contact" with Ms Lewinsky. But he insists the evidence he gave to the [Paula] Jones case in January suit had been accurate.
…
October 8, 1998
The House of Representatives vote for impeachment proceedings to begin against Clinton. The House judiciary committee will be given wide powers to draw up detailed charges against Mr Clinton, based on 11 allegations by the independent counsel Kenneth Starr in his report on the Monica Lewinsky affair (Barkham 2-3).
"Everybody is sick to death of this!" Lindsey Graham says in his country-lawyer twang. "Count me in that category."
He's a partisan Republican from South Carolina. When he landed in Congress with the revolutionary shock troops of 1994, ending four decades of Democratic rule, he was intent on cleansing the body politic of all traces of big-government liberalism. But at least in one respect, Graham's views on the impeachment ordeal are surprisingly compatible with President Clinton's.
He's a very junior member of the House Judiciary Committee -- 20th among 21 Republicans -- but the 43-year-old Graham has positioned himself, for now, as the panel's preeminent voice of reason. It's the singular, humorous and highly quotable voice of a former Air Force prosecutor who grew up helping out in his father's saloon. In a world where media exposure often equals power, Graham is claiming star status and a share of influence with his uncanny gift for the camera-ready aphorism.
"Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?" Graham declared at Monday's historic hearing -- cutting to the heart of the matter (and through the clutter of 36 other opening statements) as the Judiciary Committee launched its impeachment inquiry. Yesterday's New York Times, for one, enshrined Graham's incisive question in a four-column headline. In its loopy way, the quip recalls former Tennessee senator Howard Baker's much graver challenge during Watergate: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"
Graham's droll touch suggests that unlike many in the GOP, he believes that the current White House scandal is not necessarily a constitutional crisis. In a process sharply polarized by cultural values and ideology, he has served as an occasional bridge between warring factions, sometimes even voting with the Democrats, as he did last week on whether to release further embarrassing details of Clinton's escapades with Monica Lewinsky. Temporarily joining the losing side, Graham voted no. He is also the sole committee Republican to have publicly countenanced the possibility of censure -- a solution the White House dearly desires as a way of preempting an impeachment trial.
"The other scenario is that this guy just has a problem and he can't control himself and it's about human failings and censure is appropriate. We don't need to turn the country upside down," Graham ad-libbed on Monday (while every other committee member clung for dear life to a text). "Nobody can tell me yet whether this is part of a criminal enterprise or a bunch of lies which build upon themselves based on not wanting to embarrass your family. If that's what it is, about an extramarital affair with an intern, and that's it, I will not vote to impeach this president no matter if 82 percent of the people back home want me to, because we will destroy this country."
…
… Graham says he's not particularly swayed by the president's verbal contortions in the effort to explain his misleading testimony about the affair with Lewinsky.
"What I want to make sure I do," he says, "is pull back and understand: What is this all about? Not just the minutiae of who touched who, where and all that kind of stuff. If it truly is just about the president telling one lie that compounded itself to another lie that was even harder to believe, going from one stupid story to a goofy story to an unbelievable story where he tried to get his friends to follow him -- well, I'm not willing to overturn the election for that."
On the other hand, Clinton shouldn't take too much comfort in Graham's apparent open-mindedness. Graham, after all, was one of only 19 sponsors of last year's then-controversial impeachment inquiry resolution. He says he's especially troubled by evidence -- such as the grand jury testimony of perennial Clinton adviser Dick Morris -- suggesting that Clinton operatives have regularly intimidated "Jane Does" to keep mum about their affairs with the president. Morris called these people -- who the White House contends simply don't exist -- Clinton's "secret police" (Grove 1-2, 5).
On October 8, 1998, Graham voted in favor of legislation to open an impeachment inquiry. He was a member of the Judiciary Committee, which conducted the inquiry. In both the Judiciary Committee vote on forwarding articles of impeachment, and the full House vote on those articles of impeachment,
Graham voted for three of the four articles of impeachment. He voted against the second count of perjury in the Paula Jones case. This made him the only Republican on the Judiciary Committee to vote against any of the articles of impeachment. During the inquiry, Graham asked, "Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?" The House passed two of the impeachment articles. Graham served as an impeachment manager in the impeachment trial.
...
In 2002, longtime U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond decided to retire. Graham ran to succeed him and won the Republican primary unopposed. In the general election, he defeated Democratic nominee Alex Sanders, the former President of the College of Charleston and former Chief Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals, 600,010 votes (54%) to 487,359 (44%). Graham thus became South Carolina's first new U.S. senator since 1965 (Lindsey 5, 6).
Graham once told me that he was fascinated by “people who can handle fear and do brave, difficult things.” He was referring to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — “If you wanted to have a Martin Luther King Month, it would be fine with me” — but could just as easily have been talking about [John] McCain, a former P.O.W. Their friendship grew out of McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, when Congressman Graham threw his support behind McCain during the ugly South Carolina primary, and defiantly stuck with him even after his state went for George W. Bush. As a newly elected senator, Graham relied on McCain to show him the ropes. His foreign policy and immigration positions were soon indistinguishable from those of his mentor (Draper 3).
It all started years ago, during the push for then-President Bill Clinton's impeachment, when Lindsey Graham, then a House member, was presenting the case to senators, including Arizona's Sen. John McCain.
"Congressman Graham, on the most solemn occasion, said, 'You know, where I come from, any man calling a woman at 2 a.m. is up to no good,'" McCain said in March of 2017, explaining the history of their friendship on CNN. "I knew right then that Lindsey Graham was a guy I wanted to spend time with."
It was a friendship that would remain strong to the very end. …
…
The two men hit the campaign trail together in 2000, during McCain's first presidential bid for the GOP nomination. That race didn't go McCain's way, but when South Carolina voters promoted Graham to Congress' upper chamber in 2003, they collaborated on legislation that would have major impacts on foreign policy.
Their Senate gang once included now-former Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Democrat-turned-independent, until his retirement announcement in 2012. They were, "the three Amigos." When Lieberman left the Senate, that trio became a duo (Watson 1).
“McCain was the central figure, really, of the three of us,” Lieberman told ABC News in a recent interview.
Over his time in the Senate, McCain formed a close working relationship with Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Graham, the longtime Republican from South Carolina.
They staked their claim as prominent hawkish voices on foreign policy, an issue that took them on travels around the globe and led to the cultivation of a long-lasting friendship that lasted beyond the halls of the Senate.
“We’ve traveled the world together. I’ve seen these guys in action. I’ve learned a lot from both of them and we had so much fun,” Graham told ABC News. …
“The time really to get to know your colleagues is when you were fortunate enough to travel with them somewhere because you were on the plane together, you were talking, you were reading,” Lieberman, whom McCain even considered naming as his running mate during his 2008 presidential campaign, said. “That’s when I first found out of McCain’s love of Hemingway.”
After the 9/11 attacks, the trio made routine visits to Afghanistan and Iraq. It was on one of those trips when General David H. Petraeus gave the nickname to the triumvirate, which became vocal proponents of President George W. Bush’s “surge” strategy in Iraq.
“They were the three amigos. They were three inseparable friends,” Petraeus told ABC News. “At some point, I just started saying we had the three amigos coming in again” (Saenz 1-2).
Works cited:
Saenz, Arlette. “Inside John McCain's 'Three Amigos' Friendship.” ABC News, August 26, 2018. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/insid...
Barkham, Patrick. “Clinton Impeachment Timeline.” The Guardian, November 18, 1998. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/world/199...
Draper, Robert. “Lindsey Graham, This Year’s Maverick.” New York Times, July 1, 2010. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/ma...
Grove, Lloyd. “Lindsey Graham, a Twang of Moderation.” Washington Post, October 7, 1998. Net. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...
“Lindsey Graham.” Wikipedia. Net. https://www.google.com/search?q=Linds...
Watson, Kathryn. “The Lasting Friendship of John McCain and Lindsey Graham.” CBS News, August 25, 2018. Net. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-stor...
He graduated from the University of South Carolina with a B.A. in psychology in 1977, and from the University of South Carolina School of Law with a J.D. in 1981 (Lindsey 2).
Friends and relatives credit Graham's plain speaking and wry humor to his father, F.J. Graham -- the proprietor of the oddly named Sanitary Cafe, a combination restaurant-bar-liquor store-pool hall in Central, S.C. (pop. 2,000). Lindsey's mother, Millie, was a savvy businesswoman who cooked hamburgers and served Cokes behind the counter while F.J. -- for Florence James -- generally presided over things. The elder Graham, a barrel-chested man with a crew cut and a dry wit, was known around town as "the Dude."
"My dad was a hoot," Graham says. "Being 5 foot 7 inches and full of a mouth, you got to really stay on your toes. . . . This is a textile town. My dad never finished high school and neither did my mom. And we had a restaurant/bar and later on he got a liquor store next door and a pool hall downstairs and as a young guy I ran the pool hall. I've heard every story and then some. But at 3 o'clock in the afternoon the first shift would get off from the mill and people would come in just full of cotton and dust and they'd drink beer till midnight. And I've heard 'Satin Sheets to Lie On and Satin Pillows to Cry On' a thousand times."
Graham says he doesn't drink, probably because alcohol consumption has never held any exotic allure for him. "I've seen the bad side of drinking. I've seen a lot of drunks throwing up," he says. "A small-town community bar is what it was. I know what it's like to be thought of as the kid of the guy that owned the bar -- and everybody's so sanctimonious -- so I took all that stuff in stride. So it was a great place to learn about life. I had wives call up wanting to know if their husband's there and I'm answering the phone at 9 years of age. And I'd say, 'Well, he said he isn't here.' So I learned the hard way about a little bit of diplomacy. But it was a great upbringing."
…
You assume everything's going to be like Ozzie and Harriet," Graham says. "That doesn't mean it's going to happen that way. So here I've got a teenager on my hands. She's turned out great in spite of me. I was probably a nut. I never let her date. I smelled her clothes if she smoked. I listened in on her phone calls. I was probably pressing too hard, just 'cause I felt such responsibility for her. I paid for her college and I did all the financial deals when I got in the Air Force. I thought that was my job and I felt very happy to have done it. She is the light of my life."
…
After obtaining his law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1981, he joined the Air Force's Judge Advocate General staff, spending four years as a prosecutor and defense attorney in Europe.
"One, he was very intelligent, and two, he understands people," says Air Force Maj. Gen. Bryan Hawley, who was chief trial judge for Europe when he saw Capt. Graham work in courts-martial. "He has more common sense than I do."
In 1984, defending an Air Force pilot accused of marijuana use, Graham attracted national attention when he was featured in a CBS "60 Minutes" report that exposed the Air Force's faulty drug-testing procedures.
Graham recalls his Air Force tour as terrific fun for a young bachelor swinging his way through Paris and Rome. "Don't believe anything anybody tells you about my Air Force exploits," jokes Graham, still unhitched and a roommate of Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.), another single guy. "I was very heterosexual, that's all you need to know."
He returned home to the more sedate life of a small-town trial lawyer in Seneca amid the cotton mills of western South Carolina (Grove 2-4).
In 1992, Graham was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives from the 2nd district, in Oconee County. He defeated Democratic incumbent Lowell W. Ross by 60% to 40% and served one term, from 1993 to 1995.
In 1994, 20-year incumbent Democratic U.S. Congressman Butler Derrick of South Carolina's northwestern-based 3rd congressional district decided to retire. Graham ran to succeed him and, with Republican U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond campaigning on his behalf, won the Republican primary with 52% of the vote, defeating Bob Cantrell (33%) and Ed Allgood (15%). In the general election, Graham defeated Democratic State Senator James Bryan Jr., 60% to 40%. As a part of that year's Republican Revolution, Graham became the first Republican to represent the district since 1877.
In 1996, he was challenged by Debbie Dorn, the niece of Butler Derrick and daughter of Derrick's predecessor, 13-term Democratic Congressman William Jennings Bryan Dorn. Graham was reelected, defeating Dorn 60% to 40% (Lindsey 3)
Graham -- whose middle-aged spread and laid-back manner cushion knifelike intelligence and a sizzling ambition -- has been something of a firebrand during his career on Capitol Hill. He took part in last year's abortive coup against House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), staged by Young Turks exasperated with Gingrich's tendency to unilaterally compromise with the White House. More recently, he stood on the House floor and scolded a deeply annoyed Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the pork-rich Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, about the evils of budget-busting (Grove 5).
January 26, 1998
"I want you to listen to me. I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. I never told a single person to lie, not a single time, never," an angry President Clinton declares to an invited media audience at the White House.
…
August 17, 1998
Bill Clinton testifies in the grand jury, acknowledging "inappropriate intimate contact" with Ms Lewinsky. But he insists the evidence he gave to the [Paula] Jones case in January suit had been accurate.
…
October 8, 1998
The House of Representatives vote for impeachment proceedings to begin against Clinton. The House judiciary committee will be given wide powers to draw up detailed charges against Mr Clinton, based on 11 allegations by the independent counsel Kenneth Starr in his report on the Monica Lewinsky affair (Barkham 2-3).
"Everybody is sick to death of this!" Lindsey Graham says in his country-lawyer twang. "Count me in that category."
He's a partisan Republican from South Carolina. When he landed in Congress with the revolutionary shock troops of 1994, ending four decades of Democratic rule, he was intent on cleansing the body politic of all traces of big-government liberalism. But at least in one respect, Graham's views on the impeachment ordeal are surprisingly compatible with President Clinton's.
He's a very junior member of the House Judiciary Committee -- 20th among 21 Republicans -- but the 43-year-old Graham has positioned himself, for now, as the panel's preeminent voice of reason. It's the singular, humorous and highly quotable voice of a former Air Force prosecutor who grew up helping out in his father's saloon. In a world where media exposure often equals power, Graham is claiming star status and a share of influence with his uncanny gift for the camera-ready aphorism.
"Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?" Graham declared at Monday's historic hearing -- cutting to the heart of the matter (and through the clutter of 36 other opening statements) as the Judiciary Committee launched its impeachment inquiry. Yesterday's New York Times, for one, enshrined Graham's incisive question in a four-column headline. In its loopy way, the quip recalls former Tennessee senator Howard Baker's much graver challenge during Watergate: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"
Graham's droll touch suggests that unlike many in the GOP, he believes that the current White House scandal is not necessarily a constitutional crisis. In a process sharply polarized by cultural values and ideology, he has served as an occasional bridge between warring factions, sometimes even voting with the Democrats, as he did last week on whether to release further embarrassing details of Clinton's escapades with Monica Lewinsky. Temporarily joining the losing side, Graham voted no. He is also the sole committee Republican to have publicly countenanced the possibility of censure -- a solution the White House dearly desires as a way of preempting an impeachment trial.
"The other scenario is that this guy just has a problem and he can't control himself and it's about human failings and censure is appropriate. We don't need to turn the country upside down," Graham ad-libbed on Monday (while every other committee member clung for dear life to a text). "Nobody can tell me yet whether this is part of a criminal enterprise or a bunch of lies which build upon themselves based on not wanting to embarrass your family. If that's what it is, about an extramarital affair with an intern, and that's it, I will not vote to impeach this president no matter if 82 percent of the people back home want me to, because we will destroy this country."
…
… Graham says he's not particularly swayed by the president's verbal contortions in the effort to explain his misleading testimony about the affair with Lewinsky.
"What I want to make sure I do," he says, "is pull back and understand: What is this all about? Not just the minutiae of who touched who, where and all that kind of stuff. If it truly is just about the president telling one lie that compounded itself to another lie that was even harder to believe, going from one stupid story to a goofy story to an unbelievable story where he tried to get his friends to follow him -- well, I'm not willing to overturn the election for that."
On the other hand, Clinton shouldn't take too much comfort in Graham's apparent open-mindedness. Graham, after all, was one of only 19 sponsors of last year's then-controversial impeachment inquiry resolution. He says he's especially troubled by evidence -- such as the grand jury testimony of perennial Clinton adviser Dick Morris -- suggesting that Clinton operatives have regularly intimidated "Jane Does" to keep mum about their affairs with the president. Morris called these people -- who the White House contends simply don't exist -- Clinton's "secret police" (Grove 1-2, 5).
On October 8, 1998, Graham voted in favor of legislation to open an impeachment inquiry. He was a member of the Judiciary Committee, which conducted the inquiry. In both the Judiciary Committee vote on forwarding articles of impeachment, and the full House vote on those articles of impeachment,
Graham voted for three of the four articles of impeachment. He voted against the second count of perjury in the Paula Jones case. This made him the only Republican on the Judiciary Committee to vote against any of the articles of impeachment. During the inquiry, Graham asked, "Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?" The House passed two of the impeachment articles. Graham served as an impeachment manager in the impeachment trial.
...
In 2002, longtime U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond decided to retire. Graham ran to succeed him and won the Republican primary unopposed. In the general election, he defeated Democratic nominee Alex Sanders, the former President of the College of Charleston and former Chief Judge of the South Carolina Court of Appeals, 600,010 votes (54%) to 487,359 (44%). Graham thus became South Carolina's first new U.S. senator since 1965 (Lindsey 5, 6).
Graham once told me that he was fascinated by “people who can handle fear and do brave, difficult things.” He was referring to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — “If you wanted to have a Martin Luther King Month, it would be fine with me” — but could just as easily have been talking about [John] McCain, a former P.O.W. Their friendship grew out of McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, when Congressman Graham threw his support behind McCain during the ugly South Carolina primary, and defiantly stuck with him even after his state went for George W. Bush. As a newly elected senator, Graham relied on McCain to show him the ropes. His foreign policy and immigration positions were soon indistinguishable from those of his mentor (Draper 3).
It all started years ago, during the push for then-President Bill Clinton's impeachment, when Lindsey Graham, then a House member, was presenting the case to senators, including Arizona's Sen. John McCain.
"Congressman Graham, on the most solemn occasion, said, 'You know, where I come from, any man calling a woman at 2 a.m. is up to no good,'" McCain said in March of 2017, explaining the history of their friendship on CNN. "I knew right then that Lindsey Graham was a guy I wanted to spend time with."
It was a friendship that would remain strong to the very end. …
…
The two men hit the campaign trail together in 2000, during McCain's first presidential bid for the GOP nomination. That race didn't go McCain's way, but when South Carolina voters promoted Graham to Congress' upper chamber in 2003, they collaborated on legislation that would have major impacts on foreign policy.
Their Senate gang once included now-former Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Democrat-turned-independent, until his retirement announcement in 2012. They were, "the three Amigos." When Lieberman left the Senate, that trio became a duo (Watson 1).
“McCain was the central figure, really, of the three of us,” Lieberman told ABC News in a recent interview.
Over his time in the Senate, McCain formed a close working relationship with Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Graham, the longtime Republican from South Carolina.
They staked their claim as prominent hawkish voices on foreign policy, an issue that took them on travels around the globe and led to the cultivation of a long-lasting friendship that lasted beyond the halls of the Senate.
“We’ve traveled the world together. I’ve seen these guys in action. I’ve learned a lot from both of them and we had so much fun,” Graham told ABC News. …
“The time really to get to know your colleagues is when you were fortunate enough to travel with them somewhere because you were on the plane together, you were talking, you were reading,” Lieberman, whom McCain even considered naming as his running mate during his 2008 presidential campaign, said. “That’s when I first found out of McCain’s love of Hemingway.”
After the 9/11 attacks, the trio made routine visits to Afghanistan and Iraq. It was on one of those trips when General David H. Petraeus gave the nickname to the triumvirate, which became vocal proponents of President George W. Bush’s “surge” strategy in Iraq.
“They were the three amigos. They were three inseparable friends,” Petraeus told ABC News. “At some point, I just started saying we had the three amigos coming in again” (Saenz 1-2).
Works cited:
Saenz, Arlette. “Inside John McCain's 'Three Amigos' Friendship.” ABC News, August 26, 2018. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/insid...
Barkham, Patrick. “Clinton Impeachment Timeline.” The Guardian, November 18, 1998. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/world/199...
Draper, Robert. “Lindsey Graham, This Year’s Maverick.” New York Times, July 1, 2010. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/ma...
Grove, Lloyd. “Lindsey Graham, a Twang of Moderation.” Washington Post, October 7, 1998. Net. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...
“Lindsey Graham.” Wikipedia. Net. https://www.google.com/search?q=Linds...
Watson, Kathryn. “The Lasting Friendship of John McCain and Lindsey Graham.” CBS News, August 25, 2018. Net. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-stor...
April 10, 2022
The Amoralists -- Ted Cruz -- Part Six -- Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings
If you are disposed to hold Sen. Ted Cruz in minimal high regard — a sentiment shared by more than a few of his colleagues in the United States Senate, among others — then his performance at the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings was fully in character: a demagogic, bad-faith effort on Tuesday to imply that she would bring a racially focused agenda to the Supreme Court, coupled with a “soft on child pornographers” assault today.
The same can be said of Missouri’s Josh Hawley, whose attempts to link Jackson to her clients as a public defender have been condemned even by many conservatives. Ditto for Arkansas’ Tom Cotton, whose “do-you-think-criminals-should-be-in-prison?” rants made him seem like Inspector Javert after the Adderall had run out. …
As a critique of the nominee, the arguments of Cruz and his fellow Republicans did not border on the absurd — they fell over the cliff. If, for instance, there was any evidence that Jackson brought any affinity for critical race theory into her judicial work, you might have thought someone would have unearthed it in Jackson’s decade-plus service on the federal bench.
But judging Cruz and company by that standard misses the point. This was not a group of senators engaging in skeptical or serious questioning of a Supreme Court nominee. This was a trio of presidential candidates appealing to the base that will choose the next Republican White House nominee. And from that perspective, the trio accomplished what they set out to do. More broadly, these efforts fit perfectly into an approach that has rewarded the GOP for more than half a century: peeling away traditional Democratic voters with the twin factors of race and crime.
…
[It’s] important to understand the dynamic that is playing out at these hearings. This was the chance for a trio of presidential aspirants to display their embrace of the most toxically powerful currents flowing through our politics, and to do it while confronting a nominee who symbolizes that primal fear of “replacement” — the sense that “they” are taking power from “us,” which has made Tucker Carlson a powerful political presence and which continues to make Trump his party’s likely next nominee.
As an inquiry into the merits of a Supreme Court nominee, the performances of Cruz and company was a disgrace. As political stagecraft, it was “mission accomplished” (Greenfield 1-3).
It was Wednesday, the third day of Judge Ketanji Jackson’s confirmation hearings for a seat on the Supreme Court, and Senator Ted Cruz had finally run out of time. Each member of the Judiciary Committee had been given a ten-minute opening statement, a half hour to ask questions in a first round, and twenty minutes more in a second. (Since there are twenty-two committee members, that added up to a marathon.) Cruz had used his time to wave in the air children’s books on a reading list at the private school that one of Jackson’s daughters attends, and where the judge sits on the board, demanding to know whether she thinks “that babies are racist”; asking her to speculate about whether he could sue Harvard if he were to “decide I was an Asian man”; and, most of all, to claim that he had discerned a disturbing “pattern” in the sentences that Jackson had handed down, as a federal judge, in cases involving child pornography. He had brought a chart, with several of the cases listed, on which he made various calculations. He wasn’t getting anywhere—perhaps because Jackson’s sentencing record is not, in fact, radical or outside the mainstream, and also because she had done a good job of standing up to him—but that didn’t stop his hectoring.
That was the situation when Senator Dick Durbin, the committee chair, banged his gavel. Cruz gestured as if to wave him away, and demanded more time. “I know you don’t like this line of questioning,” he said. Durbin answered, “I just want you to play by the rules.” He tried to recognize Senator Chris Coons, but Cruz kept at it—“You can bang it as loud as you want!”—with each sentence he directed at Durbin seeming to move to a more accusatory, more conspiratorial, and more irresponsible level: “You don’t want her to answer that question?”; “Why do you not want the American people to know what happened in the Stewart case, or any of these cases?”; and “Apparently, you are very afraid of the American people hearing the answer to that question.”
Tell Ted Cruz to be quiet and he’ll insinuate that you’re part of a scheme to hide the truth about the sexual abuse of children from the American public. As it happens, that is one of the key themes in the Qanon family of conspiracy theories, as Cruz and his fellow-Republicans certainly know. Similarly, they know what they are doing in trying to paint Jackson, who would be the first Black woman on the Court, as someone whose sympathies and loyalties are with criminals, not victims—and who perhaps has some hidden agenda regarding the exploitation of children. There has always been something off-putting, to say the least, about Cruz’s self-important approach to peddling muck, but his performance at the Jackson hearings was sordid even by his standards. (He blithely recited descriptions of the materials in the various cases, for example “sadomasochistic images of infants and toddlers.”) And he was not alone: Senator Josh Hawley had taken an early lead in hyping the question of Jackson’s child-pornography sentencing record, and the Republican senators on the committee jumped in, with most at least referring to that concocted issue.
Cruz and Hawley are both potential 2024 G.O.P. Presidential contenders; the fact that they see this line of attack as an opportunity says something about the current market of ideas in their party. …
…
Confirmation hearings are often said to be shadow plays in which nominees concentrate on giving noncommittal answers. The haranguing, besmirching, and condescension directed at Jackson called for something more. The various moments when she seemed to decide that she was not going to let herself be bullied were fascinating to watch. Facing Cruz, she didn’t just dodge his questioning. She firmly, calmly, smartly pushed him away, rhetorically speaking. (Interestingly, the two of them overlapped on the Harvard Law Review; Jackson, who is a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, said that, if confirmed, she planned to recuse herself from a case involving affirmative action and the university.) She took the opportunity to show who both she and Cruz are. And yet, the experience must have been rough. (Sorkin 1-3).
Tensions flared between Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and his Democratic colleagues on the third day of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, as Cruz criticized how the proceedings were being run and one senator in the hearing accused him of performing for television cameras.
Cruz caught heat from Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, on two separate occasions in the daylong proceeding. Durbin tried twice to move on to questions from other members over Cruz’s objections.
“At some point, you have to follow the rules,” Durbin told Cruz at one point, banging his gavel.
…
… Cruz was nearing the end of his 20-minute questioning of Jackson, where he repeatedly asked her to explain her sentencing of child porn offenders. However, he interrupted Jackson — who appeared to grow increasingly frustrated with the exchange — multiple times while she was responding to his questions.
“Why did you sentence someone who had child pornography … to 28 months — 64% below what the prosecutors asked for?” Cruz asked.
Jackson, a former federal trial judge, said Cruz had picked a few cases out of her entire sentencing record to pursue his argument. Cruz — alongside several of his Republican colleagues — has scrutinized Jackson’s sentencing record in an attempt to paint the nominee as soft on crime. The senator has not voted for any of Biden’s judicial nominees.
Fact checkers from multiple news outlets have said Republicans’ comments on her sentencing record are misleading.
“It is to assign proportional punishment,” Jackson said when asked to explain her view of sentencing in cases. “It is to do justice in cases where you have defendants who are convicted of the same conduct, but have different, differing levels of culpability.”
Even as his allotted time to speak ran out, Cruz continued to ask questions on sentencing in the cases, leading Durbin to step in to force the hearing forward and allow the next person to speak. Cruz accused the chair of being afraid the American people would hear Jackson’s response.
Later in the hearing, Cruz attempted to enter into record a letter signed by all but one of the Republican committee members to receive more information on pre-sentencing probation records on the child porn cases in question. Democrats on the committee shut the effort down, noting that it was someone else’s turn to ask questions and that Cruz could submit the letter by hand.
“I know the junior senator from Texas likes to get on television, but most of us have been here a long time trying to follow the rules,” said U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democratic from Vermont and senior member of the committee and currently the longest-serving senator with 47 years of service.
That comment echoed the vague frustrations of another senator from earlier in the day.
“I think we should recognize that the jackassery we often see around here is partly because of people mugging for short-term camera opportunities,” said U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska who sits to the right of Cruz on the committee bench. Sasse was explaining why he didn’t believe cameras should be in the Supreme Court, shortly after Cruz’s first confrontation.
At another point in Cruz's questioning of Jackson, he appeared to dismiss the ability of transgender people to sue for gender discrimination, suggesting that a man could decide to change his gender simply to challenge a gender-based restriction in court.
“Tell me, does that same principle apply to other protected characteristics? For example, I am a Hispanic man. Could I decide I was an Asian man. Would I have the ability to be an Asian man and challenge Harvard’s discrimination because I made that decision?"
Cruz was referring to a lawsuit pending before the court alleging that Harvard University’s affirmative action policies violate the rights of Asians. Jackson replied that she couldn’t answer the question because it was based on hypotheticals (Zhand 1-2).
Ted Cruz thrust several books into the spotlight after his puzzling line of questioning at Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
In a hearing ostensibly meant to assess whether Jackson is qualified to serve on the highest court in the land, the Republican senator brought up critical race theory -- an academic concept taught primarily at the university and graduate levels that has since turned into a political flash point -- in K-12 schools.
As part of his questioning, Cruz presented a handful of books that he claimed were taught at Georgetown Day School -- an elite, private school in Washington, DC whose board Jackson serves on. Among the titles he mentioned were "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction" by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic; "The End of Policing" by Alex S. Vitale and "How to be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi.
Cruz focused the bulk of his questions, however, on two children's books -- "Antiracist Baby" and "Stamped (For Kids)." And his characterizations of those titles were largely distorted.
…
The book: "Antiracist Baby," written by Ibram X. Kendi and illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. It's a picture book for children.
The claim: Cruz said he was "stunned" by the ideas in the book.
"One portion of the book says, 'Babies are taught to be racist or antiracist -- there is no neutrality.' Another portion of the book: They recommend that babies 'confess when being racist,'" he said at the hearing. Cruz added that the book is taught to students at Georgetown Day School to children ages 4 to 7, asking Jackson, "Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?"
The reality: Cruz's characterization takes the ideas found in the book out of context.
In "Antiracist Baby," Kendi contends that children are not born racist but learn racist attitudes from an early age from the world around them. To counter those messages, Kendi writes, parents and caregivers should help children learn to be antiracist.
The book encourages children to openly acknowledge differences in skin color, rather than pretending they don't exist. It asks them to celebrate differences across cultures, to not see any one group as better or worse than another and to be constantly learning and growing. It invites them to talk openly about race and admit where they might have fallen short.
Crucially, "Antiracist Baby" advises children to "point at policies as the problem, not the people" and proclaims that "even though all races are not treated the same, we are all human."
The book: "Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You," adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul and illustrated by Rachelle Baker.
The book is a children's version of the history book for young adults "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You" by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi -- which, in turn, is an adaptation of Kendi's bestseller "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America."
The claim:Cruz called this book "astonishing."
Turning open the book, he said to Jackson, "On page 33, it asks the question, 'Can we send White people back to Europe?' That's what's being given to 8- and 9-year-olds."
The senator continued, "It also on page 115 says, 'The idea that we should pretend not to see racism is connected to the idea that we should pretend not to see color. It's called colorblindness.'"
Cruz skipped ahead and cited other sentences from the book, including "Here's what's WRONG with this: It's ridiculous. Skin color is something we all absolutely see" and "So to pretend not to see color is pretty convenient if you don't actually want to stamp out racism in the first place."
Finally, Cruz invoked Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and argued that the ideas contained in "Antiracist Baby" and "Stamped (For Kids)" contradict the values of the civil rights icon -- a notion that scholars who have studied King say is a distortion of his work.
The reality: Again, the passages read aloud by Cruz are a serious mischaracterization.
The sentence "Can we send White people back to Europe?" that Cruz references on page 33 appears as an aside in a chapter about the contradictions in how Thomas Jefferson talked about slavery and how he acted. The book explains how some White assimilationists, including Jefferson at one point, advocated sending Black people back to Africa and the Caribbean -- places foreign to many of the people in question.
In explaining the problems inherent in that idea, the book includes this aside: Do you see how racist ideas of today are tied to racist ideas of the past? The phrase "Go back to where you came from" that is sometimes said to Black and Brown people today connects to the "go back" ideas of the past. Now you can trace the origins right back to Thomas Jefferson. (By the way, just imagine what Native Americans and Black people must have wished about their White oppressors: Can we send White people "back" to Europe?)
Here, the sentence "Can we send White people back to Europe?" clearly demonstrates how illogical the idea of sending people "back to where they came from" is.
On page 115, the sentence referenced by Cruz ("The idea that we should pretend not to see racism is connected to the idea that we should pretend not to see color. It's called colorblindness") again appears in an aside in a chapter about the inequities in standardized testing. Although standardized testing appears equal on the surface, the authors argue, not all schools and students have the same resources -- meaning that rewarding schools based on test results deepens existing inequalities. The authors also critiqued the idea that the way to address racism in education was to not focus on it, which is when they pause to address the idea of "colorblindness."
The point that the authors are making in that passage is that ignoring differences in skin color is akin to ignoring racism. It's only by acknowledging those differences upfront, they argue in the book, that society can begin to chip away at the problem (Kaur 1-3).
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on Thursday that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will "undermine" constitution rights as an associated justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Based on her record, I believe she will prove to be the furthest left of any justice to have ever served on the Supreme Court," he said during a press conference.
"Based on her record, I think we can anticipate that she will vote consistently to undermine the constitutional rights of Americans, to undermine our rights to free speech, to undermine our rights to religious liberty, to undermine our rights under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms."
In a historic vote on Thursday [April 7, 2022] afternoon, Jackson was confirmed, 53-47, as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
…
Cruz also criticized Jackson's sentencing record in which he accused her of being lenient when ruling in child pornography cases, saying that she sentenced defendants for short prison terms.
"There is no area of law where her record is more extreme than in criminal law," he said Thursday. "When it concerns criminal law, judge Jackson's record is far, far, far out of the mainstream.
"Not only is her record consistently in favor of very, very lenient sentences for violent criminals, for drug dealers, for those who have committed horrific crimes, but she has a particular pattern of leniency for sex offenders" (Khaled 1).
Works cited:
Greenfield, Jeff. “For Ted Cruz and Company, the Jackson Hearing Was ‘Mission Accomplished’.” Politico, March 23, 2022. Net. https://www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Kaur, Harmeet. “What the Children's Books Ted Cruz Referenced at Ketanji Brown Jackson's Confirmation Hearing Really Say.” CNN, March 24, 2022. Net.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/us/ted...
Khalad, Fatma. “Ted Cruz Says KBJ Will 'Undermine' Constitution as Senate Confirms Judge.” Newsweek, April 7, 2022. Net. https://www.newsweek.com/ted-cruz-say...
Sorkin, Amy Davidson. “The Republicans’ Wild Attacks at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing.” The New Yorker, March 24, 2022. Net. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-...
Zhang, Andrew. “Ted Cruz Clashes with Democrats during Heated Confirmation Hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson.” Texas Tribune, March 23, 2022. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/...
The same can be said of Missouri’s Josh Hawley, whose attempts to link Jackson to her clients as a public defender have been condemned even by many conservatives. Ditto for Arkansas’ Tom Cotton, whose “do-you-think-criminals-should-be-in-prison?” rants made him seem like Inspector Javert after the Adderall had run out. …
As a critique of the nominee, the arguments of Cruz and his fellow Republicans did not border on the absurd — they fell over the cliff. If, for instance, there was any evidence that Jackson brought any affinity for critical race theory into her judicial work, you might have thought someone would have unearthed it in Jackson’s decade-plus service on the federal bench.
But judging Cruz and company by that standard misses the point. This was not a group of senators engaging in skeptical or serious questioning of a Supreme Court nominee. This was a trio of presidential candidates appealing to the base that will choose the next Republican White House nominee. And from that perspective, the trio accomplished what they set out to do. More broadly, these efforts fit perfectly into an approach that has rewarded the GOP for more than half a century: peeling away traditional Democratic voters with the twin factors of race and crime.
…
[It’s] important to understand the dynamic that is playing out at these hearings. This was the chance for a trio of presidential aspirants to display their embrace of the most toxically powerful currents flowing through our politics, and to do it while confronting a nominee who symbolizes that primal fear of “replacement” — the sense that “they” are taking power from “us,” which has made Tucker Carlson a powerful political presence and which continues to make Trump his party’s likely next nominee.
As an inquiry into the merits of a Supreme Court nominee, the performances of Cruz and company was a disgrace. As political stagecraft, it was “mission accomplished” (Greenfield 1-3).
It was Wednesday, the third day of Judge Ketanji Jackson’s confirmation hearings for a seat on the Supreme Court, and Senator Ted Cruz had finally run out of time. Each member of the Judiciary Committee had been given a ten-minute opening statement, a half hour to ask questions in a first round, and twenty minutes more in a second. (Since there are twenty-two committee members, that added up to a marathon.) Cruz had used his time to wave in the air children’s books on a reading list at the private school that one of Jackson’s daughters attends, and where the judge sits on the board, demanding to know whether she thinks “that babies are racist”; asking her to speculate about whether he could sue Harvard if he were to “decide I was an Asian man”; and, most of all, to claim that he had discerned a disturbing “pattern” in the sentences that Jackson had handed down, as a federal judge, in cases involving child pornography. He had brought a chart, with several of the cases listed, on which he made various calculations. He wasn’t getting anywhere—perhaps because Jackson’s sentencing record is not, in fact, radical or outside the mainstream, and also because she had done a good job of standing up to him—but that didn’t stop his hectoring.
That was the situation when Senator Dick Durbin, the committee chair, banged his gavel. Cruz gestured as if to wave him away, and demanded more time. “I know you don’t like this line of questioning,” he said. Durbin answered, “I just want you to play by the rules.” He tried to recognize Senator Chris Coons, but Cruz kept at it—“You can bang it as loud as you want!”—with each sentence he directed at Durbin seeming to move to a more accusatory, more conspiratorial, and more irresponsible level: “You don’t want her to answer that question?”; “Why do you not want the American people to know what happened in the Stewart case, or any of these cases?”; and “Apparently, you are very afraid of the American people hearing the answer to that question.”
Tell Ted Cruz to be quiet and he’ll insinuate that you’re part of a scheme to hide the truth about the sexual abuse of children from the American public. As it happens, that is one of the key themes in the Qanon family of conspiracy theories, as Cruz and his fellow-Republicans certainly know. Similarly, they know what they are doing in trying to paint Jackson, who would be the first Black woman on the Court, as someone whose sympathies and loyalties are with criminals, not victims—and who perhaps has some hidden agenda regarding the exploitation of children. There has always been something off-putting, to say the least, about Cruz’s self-important approach to peddling muck, but his performance at the Jackson hearings was sordid even by his standards. (He blithely recited descriptions of the materials in the various cases, for example “sadomasochistic images of infants and toddlers.”) And he was not alone: Senator Josh Hawley had taken an early lead in hyping the question of Jackson’s child-pornography sentencing record, and the Republican senators on the committee jumped in, with most at least referring to that concocted issue.
Cruz and Hawley are both potential 2024 G.O.P. Presidential contenders; the fact that they see this line of attack as an opportunity says something about the current market of ideas in their party. …
…
Confirmation hearings are often said to be shadow plays in which nominees concentrate on giving noncommittal answers. The haranguing, besmirching, and condescension directed at Jackson called for something more. The various moments when she seemed to decide that she was not going to let herself be bullied were fascinating to watch. Facing Cruz, she didn’t just dodge his questioning. She firmly, calmly, smartly pushed him away, rhetorically speaking. (Interestingly, the two of them overlapped on the Harvard Law Review; Jackson, who is a member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, said that, if confirmed, she planned to recuse herself from a case involving affirmative action and the university.) She took the opportunity to show who both she and Cruz are. And yet, the experience must have been rough. (Sorkin 1-3).
Tensions flared between Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and his Democratic colleagues on the third day of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, as Cruz criticized how the proceedings were being run and one senator in the hearing accused him of performing for television cameras.
Cruz caught heat from Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, on two separate occasions in the daylong proceeding. Durbin tried twice to move on to questions from other members over Cruz’s objections.
“At some point, you have to follow the rules,” Durbin told Cruz at one point, banging his gavel.
…
… Cruz was nearing the end of his 20-minute questioning of Jackson, where he repeatedly asked her to explain her sentencing of child porn offenders. However, he interrupted Jackson — who appeared to grow increasingly frustrated with the exchange — multiple times while she was responding to his questions.
“Why did you sentence someone who had child pornography … to 28 months — 64% below what the prosecutors asked for?” Cruz asked.
Jackson, a former federal trial judge, said Cruz had picked a few cases out of her entire sentencing record to pursue his argument. Cruz — alongside several of his Republican colleagues — has scrutinized Jackson’s sentencing record in an attempt to paint the nominee as soft on crime. The senator has not voted for any of Biden’s judicial nominees.
Fact checkers from multiple news outlets have said Republicans’ comments on her sentencing record are misleading.
“It is to assign proportional punishment,” Jackson said when asked to explain her view of sentencing in cases. “It is to do justice in cases where you have defendants who are convicted of the same conduct, but have different, differing levels of culpability.”
Even as his allotted time to speak ran out, Cruz continued to ask questions on sentencing in the cases, leading Durbin to step in to force the hearing forward and allow the next person to speak. Cruz accused the chair of being afraid the American people would hear Jackson’s response.
Later in the hearing, Cruz attempted to enter into record a letter signed by all but one of the Republican committee members to receive more information on pre-sentencing probation records on the child porn cases in question. Democrats on the committee shut the effort down, noting that it was someone else’s turn to ask questions and that Cruz could submit the letter by hand.
“I know the junior senator from Texas likes to get on television, but most of us have been here a long time trying to follow the rules,” said U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democratic from Vermont and senior member of the committee and currently the longest-serving senator with 47 years of service.
That comment echoed the vague frustrations of another senator from earlier in the day.
“I think we should recognize that the jackassery we often see around here is partly because of people mugging for short-term camera opportunities,” said U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska who sits to the right of Cruz on the committee bench. Sasse was explaining why he didn’t believe cameras should be in the Supreme Court, shortly after Cruz’s first confrontation.
At another point in Cruz's questioning of Jackson, he appeared to dismiss the ability of transgender people to sue for gender discrimination, suggesting that a man could decide to change his gender simply to challenge a gender-based restriction in court.
“Tell me, does that same principle apply to other protected characteristics? For example, I am a Hispanic man. Could I decide I was an Asian man. Would I have the ability to be an Asian man and challenge Harvard’s discrimination because I made that decision?"
Cruz was referring to a lawsuit pending before the court alleging that Harvard University’s affirmative action policies violate the rights of Asians. Jackson replied that she couldn’t answer the question because it was based on hypotheticals (Zhand 1-2).
Ted Cruz thrust several books into the spotlight after his puzzling line of questioning at Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
In a hearing ostensibly meant to assess whether Jackson is qualified to serve on the highest court in the land, the Republican senator brought up critical race theory -- an academic concept taught primarily at the university and graduate levels that has since turned into a political flash point -- in K-12 schools.
As part of his questioning, Cruz presented a handful of books that he claimed were taught at Georgetown Day School -- an elite, private school in Washington, DC whose board Jackson serves on. Among the titles he mentioned were "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction" by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic; "The End of Policing" by Alex S. Vitale and "How to be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi.
Cruz focused the bulk of his questions, however, on two children's books -- "Antiracist Baby" and "Stamped (For Kids)." And his characterizations of those titles were largely distorted.
…
The book: "Antiracist Baby," written by Ibram X. Kendi and illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky. It's a picture book for children.
The claim: Cruz said he was "stunned" by the ideas in the book.
"One portion of the book says, 'Babies are taught to be racist or antiracist -- there is no neutrality.' Another portion of the book: They recommend that babies 'confess when being racist,'" he said at the hearing. Cruz added that the book is taught to students at Georgetown Day School to children ages 4 to 7, asking Jackson, "Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?"
The reality: Cruz's characterization takes the ideas found in the book out of context.
In "Antiracist Baby," Kendi contends that children are not born racist but learn racist attitudes from an early age from the world around them. To counter those messages, Kendi writes, parents and caregivers should help children learn to be antiracist.
The book encourages children to openly acknowledge differences in skin color, rather than pretending they don't exist. It asks them to celebrate differences across cultures, to not see any one group as better or worse than another and to be constantly learning and growing. It invites them to talk openly about race and admit where they might have fallen short.
Crucially, "Antiracist Baby" advises children to "point at policies as the problem, not the people" and proclaims that "even though all races are not treated the same, we are all human."
The book: "Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You," adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul and illustrated by Rachelle Baker.
The book is a children's version of the history book for young adults "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You" by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi -- which, in turn, is an adaptation of Kendi's bestseller "Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America."
The claim:Cruz called this book "astonishing."
Turning open the book, he said to Jackson, "On page 33, it asks the question, 'Can we send White people back to Europe?' That's what's being given to 8- and 9-year-olds."
The senator continued, "It also on page 115 says, 'The idea that we should pretend not to see racism is connected to the idea that we should pretend not to see color. It's called colorblindness.'"
Cruz skipped ahead and cited other sentences from the book, including "Here's what's WRONG with this: It's ridiculous. Skin color is something we all absolutely see" and "So to pretend not to see color is pretty convenient if you don't actually want to stamp out racism in the first place."
Finally, Cruz invoked Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and argued that the ideas contained in "Antiracist Baby" and "Stamped (For Kids)" contradict the values of the civil rights icon -- a notion that scholars who have studied King say is a distortion of his work.
The reality: Again, the passages read aloud by Cruz are a serious mischaracterization.
The sentence "Can we send White people back to Europe?" that Cruz references on page 33 appears as an aside in a chapter about the contradictions in how Thomas Jefferson talked about slavery and how he acted. The book explains how some White assimilationists, including Jefferson at one point, advocated sending Black people back to Africa and the Caribbean -- places foreign to many of the people in question.
In explaining the problems inherent in that idea, the book includes this aside: Do you see how racist ideas of today are tied to racist ideas of the past? The phrase "Go back to where you came from" that is sometimes said to Black and Brown people today connects to the "go back" ideas of the past. Now you can trace the origins right back to Thomas Jefferson. (By the way, just imagine what Native Americans and Black people must have wished about their White oppressors: Can we send White people "back" to Europe?)
Here, the sentence "Can we send White people back to Europe?" clearly demonstrates how illogical the idea of sending people "back to where they came from" is.
On page 115, the sentence referenced by Cruz ("The idea that we should pretend not to see racism is connected to the idea that we should pretend not to see color. It's called colorblindness") again appears in an aside in a chapter about the inequities in standardized testing. Although standardized testing appears equal on the surface, the authors argue, not all schools and students have the same resources -- meaning that rewarding schools based on test results deepens existing inequalities. The authors also critiqued the idea that the way to address racism in education was to not focus on it, which is when they pause to address the idea of "colorblindness."
The point that the authors are making in that passage is that ignoring differences in skin color is akin to ignoring racism. It's only by acknowledging those differences upfront, they argue in the book, that society can begin to chip away at the problem (Kaur 1-3).
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz said on Thursday that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will "undermine" constitution rights as an associated justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Based on her record, I believe she will prove to be the furthest left of any justice to have ever served on the Supreme Court," he said during a press conference.
"Based on her record, I think we can anticipate that she will vote consistently to undermine the constitutional rights of Americans, to undermine our rights to free speech, to undermine our rights to religious liberty, to undermine our rights under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms."
In a historic vote on Thursday [April 7, 2022] afternoon, Jackson was confirmed, 53-47, as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
…
Cruz also criticized Jackson's sentencing record in which he accused her of being lenient when ruling in child pornography cases, saying that she sentenced defendants for short prison terms.
"There is no area of law where her record is more extreme than in criminal law," he said Thursday. "When it concerns criminal law, judge Jackson's record is far, far, far out of the mainstream.
"Not only is her record consistently in favor of very, very lenient sentences for violent criminals, for drug dealers, for those who have committed horrific crimes, but she has a particular pattern of leniency for sex offenders" (Khaled 1).
Works cited:
Greenfield, Jeff. “For Ted Cruz and Company, the Jackson Hearing Was ‘Mission Accomplished’.” Politico, March 23, 2022. Net. https://www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Kaur, Harmeet. “What the Children's Books Ted Cruz Referenced at Ketanji Brown Jackson's Confirmation Hearing Really Say.” CNN, March 24, 2022. Net.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/us/ted...
Khalad, Fatma. “Ted Cruz Says KBJ Will 'Undermine' Constitution as Senate Confirms Judge.” Newsweek, April 7, 2022. Net. https://www.newsweek.com/ted-cruz-say...
Sorkin, Amy Davidson. “The Republicans’ Wild Attacks at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing.” The New Yorker, March 24, 2022. Net. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-...
Zhang, Andrew. “Ted Cruz Clashes with Democrats during Heated Confirmation Hearing for Ketanji Brown Jackson.” Texas Tribune, March 23, 2022. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/...
April 7, 2022
The Amoralists -- Ted Cruz -- Part Five -- The Big Lie
Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and nine other Republican US senators or senators-elect said on Saturday they will reject presidential electors from states where Donald Trump has contested his defeat by Joe Biden, “unless and until [an] emergency 10-day audit” of such results is completed.
…
Trump has refused to concede, though Biden won more than 7m more votes nationally and took the electoral college by 306-232, a margin Trump called a landslide when he won it over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The Trump campaign has lost the vast majority of more than 50 lawsuits it has mounted in battleground states, alleging electoral fraud, and before the supreme court. On Saturday night, Trump urged his Twitter followers to “be a part of history” and join a protest march in Washington DC against the election result on Wednesday.
On Friday, a federal judge dismissed a suit lodged by a House Republican which attempted to give Pence, who will preside over the certification of the electoral college result on Wednesday, the power to overturn it. An appeal was rejected Saturday night.
Nonetheless, the senators and senators-elect who issued a statement on Saturday followed Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri in committing to challenging the result.
…
On Saturday, Utah Senator Mitt Romney described as “nonsense”, the idea that a congressional audit would restore trust in the election, saying the American people trusted federals judges more than Congress.
In a statement, he said: “The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic … President Trump’s lawyers made their case before scores of courts; in every instance, they failed.”
…
But Cruz and Johnson were joined by Senators James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Mike Braun (Indiana). Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Roger Marshall (Kansas), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) and Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) also signed on.
“The election of 2020,” they said, “like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.”
No hard evidence for such claims has been presented. …
Regardless, the senators said Congress “should immediately appoint an electoral commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.”
The senators made reference to the contested election of 1876, which ended in the appointment of such a commission.
“We should follow that precedent,” they said.
…
Cruz, like Hawley, is prominent among Republicans expected to run for president in 2024, and thus eager to appeal to supporters loyal to Trump. On Saturday, Christine Pelosi, daughter of House speaker Nancy Pelosi and a member of the Democratic National Committee, referred to the bitter 2016 primary when she tweeted: “Ted Cruz is defending Trump’s assaults on democracy with more energy than he defended his own family against Trump’s assaults on his wife and father” (Pengelly and Bryant 1-3).
Cruz didn’t address the mob that stormed the Capitol and he has forcefully denounced the violence.
But he was one of the leading voices amplifying President Donald Trump’s demand to overturn the election. Video published by The New Yorker shows rioters saying Cruz was on their side as they occupied the Senate. Spotting Cruz’s notes objecting to Biden electors, one says: “Cruz would want us to do this, so I think we’re good.”
...
Cruz pegged his objection to Biden electors to a demand for Congress to create an emergency commission to investigate allegations of election misconduct.
A 10-day delay would help the country accept the outcome, he insisted, though critics pointed out he could have demanded an inquiry without trying to invalidate tens of millions of votes and President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Cruz didn’t just lend a vote, though. He led a group of 11 senators whose objections triggered the challenges, trying to outflank Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the first senator to declare that he would object to Biden electors when Congress reviewed the Electoral College votes.
…
“For two months, Cruz joined Trump in beating the drum of election fraud until Trump loyalists were deaf to anyone — Republican, Democrat or nonpartisan journalists, not to mention state and federal courts — telling them otherwise,”wrote the Houston Chronicle in one of several Texas editorials calling on him to resign. “And yet, Cruz insists he bears no responsibility for the deadly terror attack.”
…
In a round of damage control interviews with Texas TV stations in the days after the riot, Cruz distanced himself from Trump in a way he hadn’t done since they reconciled after the bitter 2016 primaries.
“The president’s language and rhetoric often goes too far,” he told KTRK-TV in Houston, calling Trump’s speech to the crowd that would soon storm the Capitol “reckless” and then asserting that “I have disagreed with the president’s language and rhetoric for the last four years.”
…
[GOP strategist Alex] Conant said Cruz’s efforts now to put distance between himself and Trump come across as “inauthentic” in a way voters aren’t likely to reward.
“Any politician who appears calculating at a moment of national crisis is doing himself no favors,” he said (Gillman 1-2, 5-6).
John Oliver returned from a lengthy hiatus on Sunday night, lambasting Sen.Ted Cruz (R-TX) and the Republican Party for treating Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial as “a complete charade.”
Oliver missed quite a bit of news while away — his last show aired in mid-November when the news was still focused on Trump’s refusal to concede and his allies’ shameless support of his baseless voter fraud claims.
“It’s been a weird time. But we have to start with the impeachment trial that took place this week,” Oliver began, adding, “Democrats put on a compelling forensic case about Trump’s clear role as instigator of the January 6th riots, and in response, his attorneys mounted a defense that could be charitably characterized as ‘incoherent.’”
The host later condemned Cruz, whose role in the impeachment trial was to essentially act as a juror, for meeting with Trump’s lawyers in the middle of the trial.
Oliver then cut to a video of Cruz explaining what he said to Trump’s lawyers in the middle of the trial: “I said, ‘Look, you’ve gotta remember you’ve already won.’ There are not 67 votes to convict. There are 55 votes to convict, plus-minus two.”
Oliver went after the senator for admitting that Republicans treated the impeachment trial as “a complete charade,” noting how disheartening it is to hear that come from a member of the “world’s most deliberative body.”
“I said to them, ‘You gotta remember, the outcome is predetermined, nothing means anything and this entire process is a complete charade,” Oliver said mimicking Cruz. “‘Now, hands in everyone: Dead eyes, empty hearts, Ted Cruz.'”
“The fact that Republicans were going to acquit the former president no matter what is a pretty depressing sign of just how deep Trumpism runs in their party,” he continued, adding that support for Trump is “even worse” at a state level, as legislators even participated in the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6 (Idliby 1-2).
On Monday, Senator Ted Cruz urged his constituents to “stay home,” warning that winter weather beating down on Texas could be deadly. On Tuesday, he offered a shrug emoji and pronounced the situation “not good.” Then, on Wednesday, he decamped for a Ritz-Carlton resort in sun-drenched Cancún, escaping with his family from their freezing house.
And on Thursday, many Americans who had been battered by a deadly winter storm, on top of a nearly yearlong pandemic, finally found a reason to come together and lift their voices in a united chorus of rage.
FlyinTed, a homage to Donald J. Trump’s “Lyin’ Ted” nickname, began trending on Twitter. TMZ, the celebrity website, published photographs showing a Patagonia-fleece-clad Mr. Cruz waiting for his flight, hanging out in the United Club lounge and reading his phone from a seat in economy plus. The Texas Monthly, which bills itself as “the national magazine of Texas,” offered a list of curses to mutter against Mr. Cruz.
For a politician long reviled not just by Democrats but also by many of his Republican colleagues in Washington, Mr. Cruz is now the landslide winner for the title of the least sympathetic politician in America. After leaving freezing Texans to melt snow for water while he traveled to go work at the beach, Mr. Cruz offered little more than the classic political cliché — time with family — as an explanation, citing his daughters’ desire to go to Cancún as the reason for his trip. Even his dog became a player in the drama after a report that the Cruz family had left the aptly named Snowflake behind with a security guard, stirring fresh outrage on social media.
“He’s a person that people enjoy disliking,” said Bill Miller, a veteran Texas lobbyist and political consultant who has worked with members of both parties. “And now he’s been mortally wounded. It’s like he bailed out on the state at its most weakened moment. It’s an indefensible action.”
…
His opportunism often enraged fellow Republicans. After voting against federal aid for Hurricane Sandy, Mr. Cruz lobbied Congress five years later for billions of dollars as Texas cleaned up from Hurricane Harvey.
…
… But in his moment of crisis, Mr. Cruz’s four-year campaign to reclaim his position as a darling of conservatives appeared to be paying off, as several of Mr. Trump’s allies rushed to his defense. …
…
Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and a friend of Mr. Trump’s, cast the trip as akin to Mr. Cruz’s dropping his daughters off at soccer practice — never mind that this outing involved a plane flight to a $309-per-night resort.
“Now, you went and you took your daughters to Cancún and you came back,” Mr. Hannity told Mr. Cruz in a Thursday night interview. “I think you can be a father and be the senator of Texas all at the same time and make a round-trip, quick drop-off, quick trip, and come home.”
…
When it came to explaining his visit to a Mexican resort, Mr. Cruz showed unusual restraint. After pictures circulated online of him boarding a flight, aides said the trip was a previously planned vacation. Then, his office said he was simply escorting his daughters down to Cancún to join friends — like any “good dad” in the midst of an enormous meltdown of basic societal infrastructure — and had always planned to return on Thursday.
After nearly a day of uncharacteristic silence, Mr. Cruz returned home on Thursday, bearing a Texas flag mask, a suspiciously large suitcase and a classic political excuse.
“It was obviously a mistake and in hindsight I wouldn’t have done it. I was trying to be a dad,” he told reporters on Thursday, a striking admission from a politician who built his career on ceding little ground. “From the moment I sat on the plane, I began really second-guessing that decision.”
For others in his home state, there was little to guess about the incident.
“Nothing brings Texans together quite like the opportunity to rip Ted Cruz a new one,” Gene Wu, a Democratic state representative in Texas, wrote on Twitter (Lerer 1-4).
U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz joined with their Republican colleagues Friday to block a commission tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in a 54-35 vote.
While the bill establishing the commission passed the Democratic-controlled U.S. House last week, Senate Republicans effectively killed the proposal by way of the filibuster. In the Senate, 60 members are needed to move a bill to an up-or-down vote, breaking the filibuster, and Republicans successfully stopped that from happening.
…
Cruz released a statement after the commission was defeated, saying that he opposed it because it was "politically motivated."
“… With multiple investigations already underway, I do not support the politically motivated January 6 Commission led by Sen. [Chuck] Schumer and Speaker Pelosi."
The bill was modeled on the 9/11 Commission, which led to sweeping government reforms in order to prevent terrorist attacks.
…
"Republicans in both chambers are trying to rewrite history and claim that Jan. 6 was a peaceful protest that got a little out of hand.
And now this," Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, said on the Senate floor after Republicans blocked the commission. "We all know what's going on here. ... Republicans chose to defend the big lie because they believe anything that upsets Donald Trump might hurt them politically" (Livingston 1, 2).
After spending a day being slammed by TV pundits and fellow conservatives for describing last year’s U.S. Capitol insurrection as a “violent terrorist attack,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz walked back his comments on Thursday.
The Texas Republican attempted to clarify his intent on FOX News program “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” calling his own words “sloppy” and “frankly dumb.” Cruz insisted he was referring only to the rioters who attacked police during the breach of the historic building.
“For a decade, I have referred to people who violently assault police officers as terrorists. I’ve done so over and over and over again,” Cruz said Thursday.
…
His appearance came one day after Carlson lambasted the junior Texas senator for his choice of words during a Wednesday U.S. Senate committee hearing about the oversight of the Capitol Police during the 2021 riot.
During that hearing, Cruz acknowledged the “solemn anniversary” of what he called a “violent terrorist attack on the Capitol where we saw the men and women of law enforcement … risk their lives to defend the men and women who serve in this Capitol.”
The mob — made up of President Donald Trump supporters attempting to interrupt certification of the 2020 election — attacked police officers and caused millions of dollars of damage to the Capitol. Lawmakers and staff inside hid in fear for their lives as protesters breached the building carrying zip ties and wearing tactical gear.
Cruz was objecting to the certification of Arizona’s election results at the moment the Capitol was overrun. He was among several Texas Republicans who tried to cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, who continues to peddle baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
Many conservatives have spent the past several months downplaying the seriousness of the Capitol attack, which led to thousands of injuries and five deaths. About 140 officers were injured, and two officers involved in the response have died by suicide, according to a report in the New York Times.
On his program Wednesday, Carlson accused Cruz of echoing Democratic talking points at that day’s Senate committee hearing.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Carlson said. “You’re making us think maybe the Republican Party is as worthless as we suspected it was. That can’t be true. Reassure us, please, Ted Cruz.”
On Thursday, Cruz said he asked to come on Carlson’s show so he could better explain himself. Cruz said he understood why people were angry at his use of the word “terrorist” but insisted that he would never use the same word that “Democrats and the corporate media have so politicized” to describe the “patriots” that were at the Capitol that day to protest the results of the presidential election.
At the time of the breach, Cruz argued, he was asking for Congress to investigate potential voter fraud in accordance with the law.
“It would be ridiculous for me to be saying that the people standing up and protesting to follow the law were somehow terrorists,” he said. “I was talking about people who commit violence against cops.”
Democrats and the media, Cruz said, “are trying to paint everyone as a terrorist, and it’s a lie” (Harper 1-2).
Three weeks after groveling to Tucker Carlson to beg forgiveness for calling the Jan. 6 insurrection what it was — a "violent terrorist incident" — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has sent out a fundraising email suggesting the FBI orchestrated the attack.
Far-right conspiracy mongers including Fox News host Carlson have repeatedly pushed the bullshit notion that Deep State actors, including FBI agents, ginned up the Jan. 6 mob assault to discredit then-President Donald Trump.
That crackpot theory, of course, has been widely debunked. But that didn't stop Cruz, R-Texas, from seizing on it in a bid to separate far-right conspiracy kooks from their hard-earned lunch money.
"What are they trying to hide now about the events of January 6, 2021?" Cruz asked in the Jan. 22 fundraising message. "I’m working hard to expose the full truth and shine a light on whether there was any FBI involvement on that day… and the liberal media can't stand it!"
Cruz is a skilled enough rhetorician to give himself wiggle room by framing his insinuations as questions rather than statements. Even so, the intent is crystal clear.
"Did ANY FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events that day?" Cruz ponders before falsely claiming the agency regularly abused its power to do the Democrats' bidding. "We know the FBI has been misused in the past to target President Trump and our conservative movement and run interference for the Democrats."
Then Cruz drills down deep on a specific Jan. 6 theory popular in far-right circles, asking "Who is Ray Epps? Was Ray Epps a federal agent or informant?"
Right-wing pundits, including Carlson, have repeatedly, and without supporting facts, claimed Epps, a 60-year-old business owner who took part in the Jan. 6 pro-Trump rally was working for the FBI. The Washington Post recently spent more than 2,000 words explaining in excruciating detail why this has zero grounding in reality. But, hey, who needs facts (Nowlin 1-2)?
Works cited:
Gillman, Todd. ‘Ted’s Been Canceled’: Cruz’s 2024 Ambitions Hobbled by Capitol Riot, but He Could Rebound in Biden Era.” Dallas Morning News, January 16. 2021. Net. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/polit...
Harper, Karen Brooks. “ Ted Cruz Called the Jan. 6 Riot a “Terrorist Attack.” Now He Says He Misspoke.” Texas Tribune, January 6, 2022. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/...
Idliby, Leia. “John Oliver Mocks Senate GOP’s Impeachment Trial ‘Charade’: ‘Hands in Everyone! Dead Eyes, Empty Hearts, Ted Cruz!’” Mediaite, February 15, 2021. Net. https://www.mediaite.com/entertainmen...
Lerer, Lisa. “How Ted Cruz Became the Least Sympathetic Politician in America.” New York Times, February 19, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/us...
Livingston, Abby. “U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, John Cornyn Vote against Commission To Investigate January Insurrection.” Texas Tribune, May 28. 2021. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/...
Nowlin, Sanford. “Ted Cruz Sends Fundraising Email Suggesting the FBI Was behind the Jan. 6 Insurrection.” San Antonio Current, January 28. 2022. Net. https://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/...
Pengelly, Martin and Bryant, Miranda. “Ted Cruz and Other Republican Senators Oppose Certifying Election Results.” The Guardian, January 2, 2021. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
…
Trump has refused to concede, though Biden won more than 7m more votes nationally and took the electoral college by 306-232, a margin Trump called a landslide when he won it over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The Trump campaign has lost the vast majority of more than 50 lawsuits it has mounted in battleground states, alleging electoral fraud, and before the supreme court. On Saturday night, Trump urged his Twitter followers to “be a part of history” and join a protest march in Washington DC against the election result on Wednesday.
On Friday, a federal judge dismissed a suit lodged by a House Republican which attempted to give Pence, who will preside over the certification of the electoral college result on Wednesday, the power to overturn it. An appeal was rejected Saturday night.
Nonetheless, the senators and senators-elect who issued a statement on Saturday followed Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri in committing to challenging the result.
…
On Saturday, Utah Senator Mitt Romney described as “nonsense”, the idea that a congressional audit would restore trust in the election, saying the American people trusted federals judges more than Congress.
In a statement, he said: “The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic … President Trump’s lawyers made their case before scores of courts; in every instance, they failed.”
…
But Cruz and Johnson were joined by Senators James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Mike Braun (Indiana). Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Roger Marshall (Kansas), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) and Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) also signed on.
“The election of 2020,” they said, “like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.”
No hard evidence for such claims has been presented. …
Regardless, the senators said Congress “should immediately appoint an electoral commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.”
The senators made reference to the contested election of 1876, which ended in the appointment of such a commission.
“We should follow that precedent,” they said.
…
Cruz, like Hawley, is prominent among Republicans expected to run for president in 2024, and thus eager to appeal to supporters loyal to Trump. On Saturday, Christine Pelosi, daughter of House speaker Nancy Pelosi and a member of the Democratic National Committee, referred to the bitter 2016 primary when she tweeted: “Ted Cruz is defending Trump’s assaults on democracy with more energy than he defended his own family against Trump’s assaults on his wife and father” (Pengelly and Bryant 1-3).
Cruz didn’t address the mob that stormed the Capitol and he has forcefully denounced the violence.
But he was one of the leading voices amplifying President Donald Trump’s demand to overturn the election. Video published by The New Yorker shows rioters saying Cruz was on their side as they occupied the Senate. Spotting Cruz’s notes objecting to Biden electors, one says: “Cruz would want us to do this, so I think we’re good.”
...
Cruz pegged his objection to Biden electors to a demand for Congress to create an emergency commission to investigate allegations of election misconduct.
A 10-day delay would help the country accept the outcome, he insisted, though critics pointed out he could have demanded an inquiry without trying to invalidate tens of millions of votes and President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Cruz didn’t just lend a vote, though. He led a group of 11 senators whose objections triggered the challenges, trying to outflank Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the first senator to declare that he would object to Biden electors when Congress reviewed the Electoral College votes.
…
“For two months, Cruz joined Trump in beating the drum of election fraud until Trump loyalists were deaf to anyone — Republican, Democrat or nonpartisan journalists, not to mention state and federal courts — telling them otherwise,”wrote the Houston Chronicle in one of several Texas editorials calling on him to resign. “And yet, Cruz insists he bears no responsibility for the deadly terror attack.”
…
In a round of damage control interviews with Texas TV stations in the days after the riot, Cruz distanced himself from Trump in a way he hadn’t done since they reconciled after the bitter 2016 primaries.
“The president’s language and rhetoric often goes too far,” he told KTRK-TV in Houston, calling Trump’s speech to the crowd that would soon storm the Capitol “reckless” and then asserting that “I have disagreed with the president’s language and rhetoric for the last four years.”
…
[GOP strategist Alex] Conant said Cruz’s efforts now to put distance between himself and Trump come across as “inauthentic” in a way voters aren’t likely to reward.
“Any politician who appears calculating at a moment of national crisis is doing himself no favors,” he said (Gillman 1-2, 5-6).
John Oliver returned from a lengthy hiatus on Sunday night, lambasting Sen.Ted Cruz (R-TX) and the Republican Party for treating Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial as “a complete charade.”
Oliver missed quite a bit of news while away — his last show aired in mid-November when the news was still focused on Trump’s refusal to concede and his allies’ shameless support of his baseless voter fraud claims.
“It’s been a weird time. But we have to start with the impeachment trial that took place this week,” Oliver began, adding, “Democrats put on a compelling forensic case about Trump’s clear role as instigator of the January 6th riots, and in response, his attorneys mounted a defense that could be charitably characterized as ‘incoherent.’”
The host later condemned Cruz, whose role in the impeachment trial was to essentially act as a juror, for meeting with Trump’s lawyers in the middle of the trial.
Oliver then cut to a video of Cruz explaining what he said to Trump’s lawyers in the middle of the trial: “I said, ‘Look, you’ve gotta remember you’ve already won.’ There are not 67 votes to convict. There are 55 votes to convict, plus-minus two.”
Oliver went after the senator for admitting that Republicans treated the impeachment trial as “a complete charade,” noting how disheartening it is to hear that come from a member of the “world’s most deliberative body.”
“I said to them, ‘You gotta remember, the outcome is predetermined, nothing means anything and this entire process is a complete charade,” Oliver said mimicking Cruz. “‘Now, hands in everyone: Dead eyes, empty hearts, Ted Cruz.'”
“The fact that Republicans were going to acquit the former president no matter what is a pretty depressing sign of just how deep Trumpism runs in their party,” he continued, adding that support for Trump is “even worse” at a state level, as legislators even participated in the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6 (Idliby 1-2).
On Monday, Senator Ted Cruz urged his constituents to “stay home,” warning that winter weather beating down on Texas could be deadly. On Tuesday, he offered a shrug emoji and pronounced the situation “not good.” Then, on Wednesday, he decamped for a Ritz-Carlton resort in sun-drenched Cancún, escaping with his family from their freezing house.
And on Thursday, many Americans who had been battered by a deadly winter storm, on top of a nearly yearlong pandemic, finally found a reason to come together and lift their voices in a united chorus of rage.
FlyinTed, a homage to Donald J. Trump’s “Lyin’ Ted” nickname, began trending on Twitter. TMZ, the celebrity website, published photographs showing a Patagonia-fleece-clad Mr. Cruz waiting for his flight, hanging out in the United Club lounge and reading his phone from a seat in economy plus. The Texas Monthly, which bills itself as “the national magazine of Texas,” offered a list of curses to mutter against Mr. Cruz.
For a politician long reviled not just by Democrats but also by many of his Republican colleagues in Washington, Mr. Cruz is now the landslide winner for the title of the least sympathetic politician in America. After leaving freezing Texans to melt snow for water while he traveled to go work at the beach, Mr. Cruz offered little more than the classic political cliché — time with family — as an explanation, citing his daughters’ desire to go to Cancún as the reason for his trip. Even his dog became a player in the drama after a report that the Cruz family had left the aptly named Snowflake behind with a security guard, stirring fresh outrage on social media.
“He’s a person that people enjoy disliking,” said Bill Miller, a veteran Texas lobbyist and political consultant who has worked with members of both parties. “And now he’s been mortally wounded. It’s like he bailed out on the state at its most weakened moment. It’s an indefensible action.”
…
His opportunism often enraged fellow Republicans. After voting against federal aid for Hurricane Sandy, Mr. Cruz lobbied Congress five years later for billions of dollars as Texas cleaned up from Hurricane Harvey.
…
… But in his moment of crisis, Mr. Cruz’s four-year campaign to reclaim his position as a darling of conservatives appeared to be paying off, as several of Mr. Trump’s allies rushed to his defense. …
…
Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and a friend of Mr. Trump’s, cast the trip as akin to Mr. Cruz’s dropping his daughters off at soccer practice — never mind that this outing involved a plane flight to a $309-per-night resort.
“Now, you went and you took your daughters to Cancún and you came back,” Mr. Hannity told Mr. Cruz in a Thursday night interview. “I think you can be a father and be the senator of Texas all at the same time and make a round-trip, quick drop-off, quick trip, and come home.”
…
When it came to explaining his visit to a Mexican resort, Mr. Cruz showed unusual restraint. After pictures circulated online of him boarding a flight, aides said the trip was a previously planned vacation. Then, his office said he was simply escorting his daughters down to Cancún to join friends — like any “good dad” in the midst of an enormous meltdown of basic societal infrastructure — and had always planned to return on Thursday.
After nearly a day of uncharacteristic silence, Mr. Cruz returned home on Thursday, bearing a Texas flag mask, a suspiciously large suitcase and a classic political excuse.
“It was obviously a mistake and in hindsight I wouldn’t have done it. I was trying to be a dad,” he told reporters on Thursday, a striking admission from a politician who built his career on ceding little ground. “From the moment I sat on the plane, I began really second-guessing that decision.”
For others in his home state, there was little to guess about the incident.
“Nothing brings Texans together quite like the opportunity to rip Ted Cruz a new one,” Gene Wu, a Democratic state representative in Texas, wrote on Twitter (Lerer 1-4).
U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz joined with their Republican colleagues Friday to block a commission tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in a 54-35 vote.
While the bill establishing the commission passed the Democratic-controlled U.S. House last week, Senate Republicans effectively killed the proposal by way of the filibuster. In the Senate, 60 members are needed to move a bill to an up-or-down vote, breaking the filibuster, and Republicans successfully stopped that from happening.
…
Cruz released a statement after the commission was defeated, saying that he opposed it because it was "politically motivated."
“… With multiple investigations already underway, I do not support the politically motivated January 6 Commission led by Sen. [Chuck] Schumer and Speaker Pelosi."
The bill was modeled on the 9/11 Commission, which led to sweeping government reforms in order to prevent terrorist attacks.
…
"Republicans in both chambers are trying to rewrite history and claim that Jan. 6 was a peaceful protest that got a little out of hand.
And now this," Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, said on the Senate floor after Republicans blocked the commission. "We all know what's going on here. ... Republicans chose to defend the big lie because they believe anything that upsets Donald Trump might hurt them politically" (Livingston 1, 2).
After spending a day being slammed by TV pundits and fellow conservatives for describing last year’s U.S. Capitol insurrection as a “violent terrorist attack,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz walked back his comments on Thursday.
The Texas Republican attempted to clarify his intent on FOX News program “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” calling his own words “sloppy” and “frankly dumb.” Cruz insisted he was referring only to the rioters who attacked police during the breach of the historic building.
“For a decade, I have referred to people who violently assault police officers as terrorists. I’ve done so over and over and over again,” Cruz said Thursday.
…
His appearance came one day after Carlson lambasted the junior Texas senator for his choice of words during a Wednesday U.S. Senate committee hearing about the oversight of the Capitol Police during the 2021 riot.
During that hearing, Cruz acknowledged the “solemn anniversary” of what he called a “violent terrorist attack on the Capitol where we saw the men and women of law enforcement … risk their lives to defend the men and women who serve in this Capitol.”
The mob — made up of President Donald Trump supporters attempting to interrupt certification of the 2020 election — attacked police officers and caused millions of dollars of damage to the Capitol. Lawmakers and staff inside hid in fear for their lives as protesters breached the building carrying zip ties and wearing tactical gear.
Cruz was objecting to the certification of Arizona’s election results at the moment the Capitol was overrun. He was among several Texas Republicans who tried to cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, who continues to peddle baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
Many conservatives have spent the past several months downplaying the seriousness of the Capitol attack, which led to thousands of injuries and five deaths. About 140 officers were injured, and two officers involved in the response have died by suicide, according to a report in the New York Times.
On his program Wednesday, Carlson accused Cruz of echoing Democratic talking points at that day’s Senate committee hearing.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Carlson said. “You’re making us think maybe the Republican Party is as worthless as we suspected it was. That can’t be true. Reassure us, please, Ted Cruz.”
On Thursday, Cruz said he asked to come on Carlson’s show so he could better explain himself. Cruz said he understood why people were angry at his use of the word “terrorist” but insisted that he would never use the same word that “Democrats and the corporate media have so politicized” to describe the “patriots” that were at the Capitol that day to protest the results of the presidential election.
At the time of the breach, Cruz argued, he was asking for Congress to investigate potential voter fraud in accordance with the law.
“It would be ridiculous for me to be saying that the people standing up and protesting to follow the law were somehow terrorists,” he said. “I was talking about people who commit violence against cops.”
Democrats and the media, Cruz said, “are trying to paint everyone as a terrorist, and it’s a lie” (Harper 1-2).
Three weeks after groveling to Tucker Carlson to beg forgiveness for calling the Jan. 6 insurrection what it was — a "violent terrorist incident" — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has sent out a fundraising email suggesting the FBI orchestrated the attack.
Far-right conspiracy mongers including Fox News host Carlson have repeatedly pushed the bullshit notion that Deep State actors, including FBI agents, ginned up the Jan. 6 mob assault to discredit then-President Donald Trump.
That crackpot theory, of course, has been widely debunked. But that didn't stop Cruz, R-Texas, from seizing on it in a bid to separate far-right conspiracy kooks from their hard-earned lunch money.
"What are they trying to hide now about the events of January 6, 2021?" Cruz asked in the Jan. 22 fundraising message. "I’m working hard to expose the full truth and shine a light on whether there was any FBI involvement on that day… and the liberal media can't stand it!"
Cruz is a skilled enough rhetorician to give himself wiggle room by framing his insinuations as questions rather than statements. Even so, the intent is crystal clear.
"Did ANY FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events that day?" Cruz ponders before falsely claiming the agency regularly abused its power to do the Democrats' bidding. "We know the FBI has been misused in the past to target President Trump and our conservative movement and run interference for the Democrats."
Then Cruz drills down deep on a specific Jan. 6 theory popular in far-right circles, asking "Who is Ray Epps? Was Ray Epps a federal agent or informant?"
Right-wing pundits, including Carlson, have repeatedly, and without supporting facts, claimed Epps, a 60-year-old business owner who took part in the Jan. 6 pro-Trump rally was working for the FBI. The Washington Post recently spent more than 2,000 words explaining in excruciating detail why this has zero grounding in reality. But, hey, who needs facts (Nowlin 1-2)?
Works cited:
Gillman, Todd. ‘Ted’s Been Canceled’: Cruz’s 2024 Ambitions Hobbled by Capitol Riot, but He Could Rebound in Biden Era.” Dallas Morning News, January 16. 2021. Net. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/polit...
Harper, Karen Brooks. “ Ted Cruz Called the Jan. 6 Riot a “Terrorist Attack.” Now He Says He Misspoke.” Texas Tribune, January 6, 2022. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/...
Idliby, Leia. “John Oliver Mocks Senate GOP’s Impeachment Trial ‘Charade’: ‘Hands in Everyone! Dead Eyes, Empty Hearts, Ted Cruz!’” Mediaite, February 15, 2021. Net. https://www.mediaite.com/entertainmen...
Lerer, Lisa. “How Ted Cruz Became the Least Sympathetic Politician in America.” New York Times, February 19, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/us...
Livingston, Abby. “U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, John Cornyn Vote against Commission To Investigate January Insurrection.” Texas Tribune, May 28. 2021. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/...
Nowlin, Sanford. “Ted Cruz Sends Fundraising Email Suggesting the FBI Was behind the Jan. 6 Insurrection.” San Antonio Current, January 28. 2022. Net. https://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/...
Pengelly, Martin and Bryant, Miranda. “Ted Cruz and Other Republican Senators Oppose Certifying Election Results.” The Guardian, January 2, 2021. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
April 3, 2022
The Amoralists -- Ted Cruz -- Part Four -- Trump's Wing Man
Ted Cruz on Friday said he would vote for Donald Trump for president and that he would encourage others to do the same, reversing months of opposition to his bitter primary rival.
"After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump," he wrote in a Facebook post.
Cruz said he endorsed both because of his primary pledge to support the party nominee, as well as his concerns about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
…
Cruz had previously gone as far as to tell Republicans to “vote your conscience” at the Republican National Convention, rather than urging them to get behind the nominee. Since then, Cruz, who may face a primary challenge in his 2018 Senate reelection campaign, has come under mounting pressure to get behind Trump, though many Cruz loyalists see an endorsement as unacceptable.
At the outset of the Republican [presidential] primary, Cruz went out of his way to praise Trump, expecting that the real estate mogul’s support would crumble, and Cruz would be the beneficiary. But as the primary continued and Trump moved into an increasingly strong position in the race, Cruz sought to fashion himself as the conservative alternative to Trump, repeatedly describing his opponent as a liberal who had few differences with Hillary Clinton.
The race turned increasingly personal between the two, with Trump attacking Cruz’s wife and seeking to link Cruz’s father to conspiracy theories about assassinating former President John F. Kennedy. On the day that he dropped out of the race, Cruz took his criticism of Trump to a new level, accusing him of being a “pathological liar,” a “serial philanderer” and an “utterly amoral” “bully.”
…
… Cruz’s unwillingness to support Trump has become an issue in his home state as he prepares for Senate re-election. The morning after he refused to support Trump at the RNC, the Texas delegation breakfast broke out into chaos as delegates split over whether or not Cruz should support the nominee.
Since then, Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), a possible Cruz primary challenger for Cruz’s Senate seat, has been using the senator’s unwillingness to support Trump as a means of attacking Cruz.
…
The Texas senator has been gradually making moves to soothe his often poor relations with fellow senators since his primary loss, helping raise money for at-risk Republicans and donating $100,000 to the Senate GOP’s campaign arm. But many Republicans on Capitol Hill have prodded him to go further and hold his nose with an endorsement. While several Republicans said Cruz’s bloc of conservative voters could make the difference for Trump, others said any endorsement would be more about helping secure Cruz’s own political standing than Trump’s (Glueck and Everett 1-2).
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is aligning with President Donald Trump in highlighting the lack of evidence in recently issued indictments that Russia's government colluded with Trump's 2016 campaign to influence the election.
"On the face of these indictments, they say that the American side of it was unwitting — that there was not collusion. That's pretty significant," Cruz told reporters here Saturday night while emphasizing he is still waiting to see the results of congressional probes into Russia's role in the election. Those investigations, Cruz said, "need to be continued."
Unveiled Friday, the indictments allege that 13 Russian nationals sought to interfere in the election and boost Trump over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The indictments came from special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether Trump's campaign had any connection to Russian meddling in the election — an issue that has overshadowed the president's first year in office.
…
Trump's reaction to the indictment — which has largely focused on the collusion debate instead of the actual content of the charges — has revived questions about whether the president is taking a tough enough stance toward Russia. Asked whether the president needed to be more forceful, Cruz contrasted Trump's approach with the "eight years of weakness we had seen with Barack Obama," the Democratic former commander in chief.
“I have been very encouraged by the strength and resolve demonstrated by the president," Cruz said. "I think we need to continue to show strong resolve" (Svitek 1,2).
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz locked in a second term Tuesday by defeating Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, seeing off Democrats’ most aggressive attempt in decades to win a statewide office in Texas.
Cruz had 51 percent of the vote to 49 percent for O’Rourke when three networks called the race with less than a quarter of the precincts reporting.
…
O’Rourke’s campaign forced Cruz, who feuded with fellow Republicans for long stretches of his first term, to run hard for a second six-year term. He attacked O’Rourke as a liberal out of step with Texas’ traditional conservatism on immigration, drugs and a host of other issues.
And in a sign of a changing Cruz, his campaign also touted bipartisan work bringing home federal aid after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas.
Cruz also leaned on help from the rest of the Republican Party, including President Donald Trump, whom Cruz famously called a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral” during the 2016 presidential primaries. In July, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick urged White House officials to airdrop the president into the Lone Star State to keep O’Rourke at bay, and Trump came to the state to rally voters for Cruz in October, ditching the “Lyin’ Ted” moniker he had deployed during the primary fight and instead labeling Cruz “Beautiful Ted” (Dixon 1).
O'Rourke catapulted into the national spotlight after a video of him answering a question about whether NFL players should be allowed to kneel in protest during the national anthem went viral.
In the clip, O'Rourke takes a question from an audience member (who, according to Politico, was planted by Cruz's campaign) on the issue.
"And so non-violently, peacefully, while the eyes of this country are watching these games, they take a knee to bring our attention and our focus to this problem to ensure that we fix it," O'Rourke said at the Houston event.
"That is why they are doing it," he said. "And I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully, standing up, or taking a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere, in any place."
Cruz immediately fired back with an attack ad featuring a double amputee who served in Vietnam, making the issue one of the biggest in the race.
“I gave two legs for this country. I’m not able to stand," says the veteran, Tim Lee. "But I sure expect you to stand for me when the national anthem is being played.”
O'Rourke's viral NFL video captured the attention of athletes, celebrities and other national figures.
O'Rourke landed a guest spot on the Ellen DeGeneres show after the video and also did The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Cruz has criticized O'Rourke for this recognition, frequently referencing the Democrat's Hollywood support (Meckelburg 2-3).
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Sunday joined President Trump in lashing out at the New York Times over the paper’s coverage of the president.
“The NYT is destroying itself w/ Trump hatred. And it’s ultimately bad for freedom of the press when ‘journalists’ openly revel in being partisan propagandists. When our Nation is so tribalized that each side has their own ‘news’ & ‘facts’ and we don’t even talk to each other,” Cruz tweeted.
He called the paper a “propaganda outlet by liberals, for liberals.”
Cruz, citing a story published on the conservative blog Red State, claims a New York Times editor said “(in effect) ‘for 2 yrs, we covered ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ facts be damned; now we’ll scream ‘racism, racism, racism’ for 18 mos, and the rest of the media follow us.’”
“That’s not journalism,” Cruz tweeted.
Cruz and the blog he cited are referencing a meeting New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet had with staff regarding the paper’s coverage and a recent controversial print headline that said “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM” in describing Trump’s response to a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that killed 22 people earlier this month.
…
During the meeting, Baquet did discuss how the paper should focus its coverage going forward, based on the reported transcript.
“Chapter 1 of the story of Donald Trump, not only for our newsroom but, frankly, for our readers, was: Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice? That was a really hard story, by the way, let’s not forget that...And I think we covered that story better than anybody else,” Baquet said, according to Slate’s transcript of the meeting.
“I think that we’ve got to change. I mean, the vision for coverage for the next two years is what I talked about earlier: How do we cover a guy who makes these kinds of remarks?...How do we write about race in a thoughtful way, something we haven’t done in a large way in a long time? That, to me, is the vision for coverage. You all are going to have to help us shape that vision. But I think that’s what we’re going to have to do for the rest of the next two years,” he added.
Trump tweeted earlier calling out the Times, seemingly referencing the same meeting, calling the coverage a "racism witch hunt" (Klar 1-2).
Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz launched a podcast this week, saying he'll use it to air his daily musings about the historic Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Cruz is a juror along with the other members of the U.S. Senate.
His first episode of the podcast, titled "Verdict," was recorded at 2:42 a.m. Wednesday, after the first day of the trial.
Throughout the first episode, Cruz referred to the trial as highly partisan and argued that the impeachment was a political attack. He also expressed hope that the president's counsel would get more into the "substantive argument" that Trump's actions did not constitute a high crime or misdemeanor. There are two episodes so far.
…
In the first episode, Cruz said that the impeachment managers — members of the House acting as prosecution in the trial — had "some good moments" early in the trial but that as time wore on, their arguments grew "redundant." He said that impeachment managers' cases failed to demonstrate proof of "treason, bribery or other high crimes or misdemeanors."
…
The House voted largely along party lines in December to impeach Trump over allegations he used his office to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate a family member of his [Cruz’s] political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. ...
…
Cruz has repeatedly defended Trump and dismissed the seriousness of the impeachment allegations. He has falsely claimed that there is evidence of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and defended Trump's actions in the call with the Ukranian president. In response, he's received praise from the president — including a retweet of Cruz’s announcement of “Verdict” (Manas 1-2).
Under President Donald Trump's leadership, the United States has the highest COVID-19 death count in the world — and states with Republican governors, including Florida and Texas, had some of the worst coronavirus surges over the summer. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tried to defend the GOP response to the COVID-19 pandemic during a Monday, September 28 appearance on ABC's "The View" — and it didn't go well for the GOP senator.
Grilling Cruz forcefully, liberal co-host Joy Behar noted that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis "recently lifted all restrictions on businesses, allowing bars and restaurants to operate at full capacity without a mask mandate. He said they won't be closing anything going forward." Behar asked Cruz if Texas should do the same thing, and he responded by trying to blame Democrats for coronavirus deaths — especially New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cruz claimed that the death rates have been "much, much lower" in Florida than in states with Democratic governors, failing to mention how quickly Cuomo enacted a stay-at-home policy.
Behar, however, reminded Cruz that New York was "hit early" by the pandemic. And when Cruz wouldn't say anything about DeSantis' policies, Behar told the senator, "You are deflecting, sir. You are deflecting the question."
Whoopi Goldberg, another co-host, jumped in, reminding Cruz how disastrous Trump's response to the pandemic has been at the federal level.
"Had the man who is running the country right now given us this information in January when he had it — when we could have maybe done something a little differently — it might have worked differently," Goldberg told Cruz. "I just wanted to point that out. It's not about whose people died more. People died, and they didn't have to" (Henderson 1-2).
Works cited:
Dixon, Darius. “Ted Cruz Wins Reelection over Beto O’Rourke.” Politico, November 6, 2018. Net. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/1...
Glueck, Katie and Everett, Burgess. “Cruz: I'm Voting for Trump.” Politico, September 23, 2016. Net. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...
Henderson, Alex. "’The View’ Hosts Corner Ted Cruz over Attempt To Blame Democrats for COVID-19 Deaths.” Salon, September 29, 2020. Net. https://www.salon.com/2020/09/29/the-...
Klar, Rebecca. “Cruz: New York Times 'Destroying Itself' with Trump 'Hatred'.” The Hill, August 18, 2019. Net. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4...
Manas, Sam. “Sen. Ted Cruz Launches Daily Podcast about Trump Impeachment Trial.” Texas Tribune, January 23, 2020. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2020/01/...
Meckelburg, Madlin. “Beto 2020: Key Moments from the O'Rourke, Ted Cruz Senate Race in Texas.” El Paso Times, updated March 4, 2019. Net. https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/new...
Svitek, Patrick. “Cruz, like Trump, Points to Lack of Collusion Evidence in Russia Indictments.” Texas Tribune, February 17, 2018. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2018/02/...
"After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump," he wrote in a Facebook post.
Cruz said he endorsed both because of his primary pledge to support the party nominee, as well as his concerns about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
…
Cruz had previously gone as far as to tell Republicans to “vote your conscience” at the Republican National Convention, rather than urging them to get behind the nominee. Since then, Cruz, who may face a primary challenge in his 2018 Senate reelection campaign, has come under mounting pressure to get behind Trump, though many Cruz loyalists see an endorsement as unacceptable.
At the outset of the Republican [presidential] primary, Cruz went out of his way to praise Trump, expecting that the real estate mogul’s support would crumble, and Cruz would be the beneficiary. But as the primary continued and Trump moved into an increasingly strong position in the race, Cruz sought to fashion himself as the conservative alternative to Trump, repeatedly describing his opponent as a liberal who had few differences with Hillary Clinton.
The race turned increasingly personal between the two, with Trump attacking Cruz’s wife and seeking to link Cruz’s father to conspiracy theories about assassinating former President John F. Kennedy. On the day that he dropped out of the race, Cruz took his criticism of Trump to a new level, accusing him of being a “pathological liar,” a “serial philanderer” and an “utterly amoral” “bully.”
…
… Cruz’s unwillingness to support Trump has become an issue in his home state as he prepares for Senate re-election. The morning after he refused to support Trump at the RNC, the Texas delegation breakfast broke out into chaos as delegates split over whether or not Cruz should support the nominee.
Since then, Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), a possible Cruz primary challenger for Cruz’s Senate seat, has been using the senator’s unwillingness to support Trump as a means of attacking Cruz.
…
The Texas senator has been gradually making moves to soothe his often poor relations with fellow senators since his primary loss, helping raise money for at-risk Republicans and donating $100,000 to the Senate GOP’s campaign arm. But many Republicans on Capitol Hill have prodded him to go further and hold his nose with an endorsement. While several Republicans said Cruz’s bloc of conservative voters could make the difference for Trump, others said any endorsement would be more about helping secure Cruz’s own political standing than Trump’s (Glueck and Everett 1-2).
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is aligning with President Donald Trump in highlighting the lack of evidence in recently issued indictments that Russia's government colluded with Trump's 2016 campaign to influence the election.
"On the face of these indictments, they say that the American side of it was unwitting — that there was not collusion. That's pretty significant," Cruz told reporters here Saturday night while emphasizing he is still waiting to see the results of congressional probes into Russia's role in the election. Those investigations, Cruz said, "need to be continued."
Unveiled Friday, the indictments allege that 13 Russian nationals sought to interfere in the election and boost Trump over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The indictments came from special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether Trump's campaign had any connection to Russian meddling in the election — an issue that has overshadowed the president's first year in office.
…
Trump's reaction to the indictment — which has largely focused on the collusion debate instead of the actual content of the charges — has revived questions about whether the president is taking a tough enough stance toward Russia. Asked whether the president needed to be more forceful, Cruz contrasted Trump's approach with the "eight years of weakness we had seen with Barack Obama," the Democratic former commander in chief.
“I have been very encouraged by the strength and resolve demonstrated by the president," Cruz said. "I think we need to continue to show strong resolve" (Svitek 1,2).
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz locked in a second term Tuesday by defeating Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, seeing off Democrats’ most aggressive attempt in decades to win a statewide office in Texas.
Cruz had 51 percent of the vote to 49 percent for O’Rourke when three networks called the race with less than a quarter of the precincts reporting.
…
O’Rourke’s campaign forced Cruz, who feuded with fellow Republicans for long stretches of his first term, to run hard for a second six-year term. He attacked O’Rourke as a liberal out of step with Texas’ traditional conservatism on immigration, drugs and a host of other issues.
And in a sign of a changing Cruz, his campaign also touted bipartisan work bringing home federal aid after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas.
Cruz also leaned on help from the rest of the Republican Party, including President Donald Trump, whom Cruz famously called a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral” during the 2016 presidential primaries. In July, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick urged White House officials to airdrop the president into the Lone Star State to keep O’Rourke at bay, and Trump came to the state to rally voters for Cruz in October, ditching the “Lyin’ Ted” moniker he had deployed during the primary fight and instead labeling Cruz “Beautiful Ted” (Dixon 1).
O'Rourke catapulted into the national spotlight after a video of him answering a question about whether NFL players should be allowed to kneel in protest during the national anthem went viral.
In the clip, O'Rourke takes a question from an audience member (who, according to Politico, was planted by Cruz's campaign) on the issue.
"And so non-violently, peacefully, while the eyes of this country are watching these games, they take a knee to bring our attention and our focus to this problem to ensure that we fix it," O'Rourke said at the Houston event.
"That is why they are doing it," he said. "And I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully, standing up, or taking a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere, in any place."
Cruz immediately fired back with an attack ad featuring a double amputee who served in Vietnam, making the issue one of the biggest in the race.
“I gave two legs for this country. I’m not able to stand," says the veteran, Tim Lee. "But I sure expect you to stand for me when the national anthem is being played.”
O'Rourke's viral NFL video captured the attention of athletes, celebrities and other national figures.
O'Rourke landed a guest spot on the Ellen DeGeneres show after the video and also did The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Cruz has criticized O'Rourke for this recognition, frequently referencing the Democrat's Hollywood support (Meckelburg 2-3).
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Sunday joined President Trump in lashing out at the New York Times over the paper’s coverage of the president.
“The NYT is destroying itself w/ Trump hatred. And it’s ultimately bad for freedom of the press when ‘journalists’ openly revel in being partisan propagandists. When our Nation is so tribalized that each side has their own ‘news’ & ‘facts’ and we don’t even talk to each other,” Cruz tweeted.
He called the paper a “propaganda outlet by liberals, for liberals.”
Cruz, citing a story published on the conservative blog Red State, claims a New York Times editor said “(in effect) ‘for 2 yrs, we covered ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ facts be damned; now we’ll scream ‘racism, racism, racism’ for 18 mos, and the rest of the media follow us.’”
“That’s not journalism,” Cruz tweeted.
Cruz and the blog he cited are referencing a meeting New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet had with staff regarding the paper’s coverage and a recent controversial print headline that said “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM” in describing Trump’s response to a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that killed 22 people earlier this month.
…
During the meeting, Baquet did discuss how the paper should focus its coverage going forward, based on the reported transcript.
“Chapter 1 of the story of Donald Trump, not only for our newsroom but, frankly, for our readers, was: Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice? That was a really hard story, by the way, let’s not forget that...And I think we covered that story better than anybody else,” Baquet said, according to Slate’s transcript of the meeting.
“I think that we’ve got to change. I mean, the vision for coverage for the next two years is what I talked about earlier: How do we cover a guy who makes these kinds of remarks?...How do we write about race in a thoughtful way, something we haven’t done in a large way in a long time? That, to me, is the vision for coverage. You all are going to have to help us shape that vision. But I think that’s what we’re going to have to do for the rest of the next two years,” he added.
Trump tweeted earlier calling out the Times, seemingly referencing the same meeting, calling the coverage a "racism witch hunt" (Klar 1-2).
Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz launched a podcast this week, saying he'll use it to air his daily musings about the historic Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Cruz is a juror along with the other members of the U.S. Senate.
His first episode of the podcast, titled "Verdict," was recorded at 2:42 a.m. Wednesday, after the first day of the trial.
Throughout the first episode, Cruz referred to the trial as highly partisan and argued that the impeachment was a political attack. He also expressed hope that the president's counsel would get more into the "substantive argument" that Trump's actions did not constitute a high crime or misdemeanor. There are two episodes so far.
…
In the first episode, Cruz said that the impeachment managers — members of the House acting as prosecution in the trial — had "some good moments" early in the trial but that as time wore on, their arguments grew "redundant." He said that impeachment managers' cases failed to demonstrate proof of "treason, bribery or other high crimes or misdemeanors."
…
The House voted largely along party lines in December to impeach Trump over allegations he used his office to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate a family member of his [Cruz’s] political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. ...
…
Cruz has repeatedly defended Trump and dismissed the seriousness of the impeachment allegations. He has falsely claimed that there is evidence of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and defended Trump's actions in the call with the Ukranian president. In response, he's received praise from the president — including a retweet of Cruz’s announcement of “Verdict” (Manas 1-2).
Under President Donald Trump's leadership, the United States has the highest COVID-19 death count in the world — and states with Republican governors, including Florida and Texas, had some of the worst coronavirus surges over the summer. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas tried to defend the GOP response to the COVID-19 pandemic during a Monday, September 28 appearance on ABC's "The View" — and it didn't go well for the GOP senator.
Grilling Cruz forcefully, liberal co-host Joy Behar noted that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis "recently lifted all restrictions on businesses, allowing bars and restaurants to operate at full capacity without a mask mandate. He said they won't be closing anything going forward." Behar asked Cruz if Texas should do the same thing, and he responded by trying to blame Democrats for coronavirus deaths — especially New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Cruz claimed that the death rates have been "much, much lower" in Florida than in states with Democratic governors, failing to mention how quickly Cuomo enacted a stay-at-home policy.
Behar, however, reminded Cruz that New York was "hit early" by the pandemic. And when Cruz wouldn't say anything about DeSantis' policies, Behar told the senator, "You are deflecting, sir. You are deflecting the question."
Whoopi Goldberg, another co-host, jumped in, reminding Cruz how disastrous Trump's response to the pandemic has been at the federal level.
"Had the man who is running the country right now given us this information in January when he had it — when we could have maybe done something a little differently — it might have worked differently," Goldberg told Cruz. "I just wanted to point that out. It's not about whose people died more. People died, and they didn't have to" (Henderson 1-2).
Works cited:
Dixon, Darius. “Ted Cruz Wins Reelection over Beto O’Rourke.” Politico, November 6, 2018. Net. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/1...
Glueck, Katie and Everett, Burgess. “Cruz: I'm Voting for Trump.” Politico, September 23, 2016. Net. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...
Henderson, Alex. "’The View’ Hosts Corner Ted Cruz over Attempt To Blame Democrats for COVID-19 Deaths.” Salon, September 29, 2020. Net. https://www.salon.com/2020/09/29/the-...
Klar, Rebecca. “Cruz: New York Times 'Destroying Itself' with Trump 'Hatred'.” The Hill, August 18, 2019. Net. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4...
Manas, Sam. “Sen. Ted Cruz Launches Daily Podcast about Trump Impeachment Trial.” Texas Tribune, January 23, 2020. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2020/01/...
Meckelburg, Madlin. “Beto 2020: Key Moments from the O'Rourke, Ted Cruz Senate Race in Texas.” El Paso Times, updated March 4, 2019. Net. https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/new...
Svitek, Patrick. “Cruz, like Trump, Points to Lack of Collusion Evidence in Russia Indictments.” Texas Tribune, February 17, 2018. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2018/02/...
March 31, 2022
The Amoralists -- Ted Cruz -- Part Three -- The Freshman Senator
The AP projects that Tea Party star Ted Cruz will win the Texas Republican Senate primary, defeating "establishment" candidate and longtime Lieutenant Gov. David Dewhurst.
In the past several weeks victory for Cruz, the former solicitor general, had begun to look increasingly likely, with polls showing him ahead of Dewhurst, and major national Tea Party stars like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint turning out to campaign for him in the final days leading up to the runoff. However, for the bulk of the race Cruz had been the underdog, lacking in the wealth and name recognition enjoyed by Dewhurst, who has been the lieutenant governor under Rick Perry since 2003.
While Cruz, 41, may have had the majority of national star power on his side, Dewhurst, 66, had the backing of many in the Texas political establishment, including Perry. Dewhurst enjoyed a huge financial advantage over Cruz.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Dewhurst poured $11 million of his own personal fortune- he founded a successful energy company called Falcon Seaboard- into his campaign, spending a total of $19 million, as compared to Cruz's $7 million spent. But ultimately Dewhurst's wallet was no match for Cruz's political prowess.
Cruz painted his opponent as a moderate who would be willing, if not eager, to compromise with Democrats in Congress. Dewhurst has a very conservative record- he's anti-abortion rights, he supports a balanced budget amendment, and on Monday morning he stopped by a Chick-Fil-A to show his support for the restaurant embroiled in a controversy regarding their president's recent comments on gay marriage. Nevertheless, Cruz and his supporters pointed to compromises Dewhurst had made with Democrats in the state legislature, and argued that his record was merely a reflection of Rick Perry's conservative agenda and did not provide an accurate representation of Dewhurst's own governing style (Hartfield 1-2).
In the November 6 general election, Cruz faced Democratic nominee Paul Sadler, an attorney and a former state representative from Henderson, in east Texas. Cruz won with 4.5 million votes (56.4%) to Sadler's 3.2 million (40.6%). According to a poll by Cruz's pollster Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research, Cruz received 40% of the Hispanic vote, outperforming Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney among Hispanics in Texas (Ted 4).
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz potentially violated ethics rules by failing to publicly disclose his financial relationship with a Caribbean-based holding company during the 2012 campaign, a review of financial disclosure and company documents by TIME shows. The relationship originated with a $6,000 investment Cruz made more than a decade ago in a Jamaican private equity firm founded by his college roommate.
When Cruz later reported the financial relationship in 2013, he failed to comply with Senate rules requiring full identification of the holding company and its location, triggering an inquiry by Senate Select Committee on Ethics staff and a second amended disclosure. After additional inquiries by TIME this week, Cruz said he is now in the process making further corrections to his disclosure (Calibressi 1).
As Ted Cruz tells it, the story of how he financed his upstart campaign for the United States Senate four years ago is an endearing example of loyalty and shared sacrifice between a married couple.
“Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign,” he says he told his wife, Heidi, who readily agreed.
But the couple’s decision to pump more than $1 million into Mr. Cruz’s successful Tea Party-darling Senate bid in Texas was made easier by a large loan from Goldman Sachs, where Mrs. Cruz works. That loan was not disclosed in campaign finance reports.
Those reports show that in the critical weeks before the May 2012 Republican primary, Mr. Cruz — currently a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination — put “personal funds” totaling $960,000 into his Senate campaign. Two months later, shortly before a scheduled runoff election, he added more, bringing the total to $1.2 million — “which is all we had saved,” as Mr. Cruz described it in an interview with The New York Times several years ago.
A review of personal financial disclosures that Mr. Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of assets that would have accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign. What it does show, however, is that in the first half of 2012, Ted and Heidi Cruz obtained the low-interest loan from Goldman Sachs, as well as another one from Citibank. The loans totaled as much as $750,000 and eventually increased to a maximum of $1 million before being paid down later that year. There is no explanation of their purpose.
Neither loan appears in reports the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee filed with the Federal Election Commission, in which candidates are required to disclose the source of money they borrow to finance their campaigns. Other campaigns have been investigated and fined for failing to make such disclosures, which are intended to inform voters and prevent candidates from receiving special treatment from lenders. There is no evidence that the Cruzes got a break on their loans.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz’s presidential campaign, Catherine Frazier, acknowledged that the loan from Goldman Sachs, drawn against the value of the Cruzes’ brokerage account, was a source of money for the Senate race. Ms. Frazier added that Mr. Cruz also sold stocks and liquidated savings, but she did not address whether the Citibank loan was used.
The failure to report the Goldman Sachs loan, for as much as $500,000, was “inadvertent,” she said, adding that the campaign would file corrected reports as necessary. Ms. Frazier said there had been no attempt to hide anything (McIntire 1-2).
Hey, Notice Me!
Back in 2013, Cruz -- then a junior member of the Senate’s minority party -- had tried to end funding for the Affordable Care Act. He pushed for language to defund Obamacare in spending bills, which would have forced then-President Barack Obama to choose between keeping the government open and crippling his signature legislative achievement.
As the high-stakes legislative game played out, Obama and his fellow Democrats refused to agree to gut the law, and the Republicans, as a minority party, didn’t have the numbers to force their will. Following a 16-day shutdown, lawmakers voted to fund both the government and the Affordable Care Act.
Cruz was widely identified at the time as the leader of the defunding effort. Most famously, Cruz spoke about defunding Obamacare on the Senate floor during a 21-hour speech, punctuated by Green Eggs and Ham as a bedtime story for his children.
Many in Cruz’s own party, even those sympathetic with his goals, blamed him for a tactical blunder. During the spending impasse, his Republican colleagues launched "a barrage of hostile questions" at a GOP-only lunch, questioning whether Cruz had thought through the endgame.
…
Cruz … [maintained] that his motivation was not to keep the government from being funded, but rather to defund Obamacare, and that the only reason people believe this is because of the biased media (Jacobson 1-2).
Republicans were largely blamed for the shutdown. Cruz’s theatrics inspired the ire not just of Democrats, but of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, who felt Cruz knew his self-righteous gambit was doomed to fail, but went ahead with it anyway to raise his own political profile at his party’s expense. … (Kirby 2, 3).
Ted Cruz came to Washington two-and-a-half years ago pledging to be the anti-senator. But he’s been more like the no-show senator.
The Texas Republican seriously lags most of his colleagues in attending hearings and casting votes in what has been a Senate career long on rhetoric and short on Senate business.
He’s skipped the vast majority of Armed Services Committee hearings, is below-average in attendance on his other major committees and ranks 97th during the first three months of this year in showing up for roll call votes on the Senate floor.
…
Last month, Cruz dismissed concerns about all the Armed Services Committee hearings he’s missed over the past few months by saying he’s been busy planning a presidential campaign. But a POLITICO review has found that his attendance problems date back to his first few months as a senator in 2013, when he skipped congressional hearings on immigration, the war in Afghanistan and across-the-board spending cuts.
…
“Sen. Cruz remains incredibly active on the issues important to the 27 million Texans he represents and takes care to make sure his constituents know where he stands on these matters,” [Cruz’s communications director, Amanda] Carpenter said in a statement. “In a short time, Sen. Cruz has become a leading voice in our debates about commerce, constitutional rights and national security and will continue advocating ways to make Americans more prosperous and free.”
…
For Cruz, another priority has been speaking out on conservative causes around the country — a clearly different way to leverage his influence as a senator and, not coincidentally, pump up his name recognition among the kind of activists who can propel a campaign for higher office.
For instance, on March 6, 2014, Cruz was at National Harbor, Md., roaring to an audience of defense-minded conservative voters organized by Breitbart News about U.S. missteps in dealing with Iran, Israel and the bloody civil war in Syria. “What this administration doesn’t understand is that weakness and appeasement only invite military conflict,” he thundered.
Meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill that day, other members of the Armed Services Committee were asking tough questions of the top U.S. general in the Middle East, covering violence in Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan and the “perennial fight against Al-Qaeda,” according to transcripts (Wright 1,2).
Attack Obama, Attack, Attack!
According to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is essentially financing terrorism. And he’s not backing down after the president called his comments “outrageous.”
“If this deal is consummated, it will make the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” Cruz said during a round table Tuesday. “Billions of dollars under control of this administration will flow into the hands of jihadists who will use that money to murder Americans, to murder Israelis, to murder Europeans.”
Cruz has said the remarks before.
On Monday, Obama responded to criticism of the deal. He also addressed Cruz’s comments, and others from members of GOP lawmakers, calling them “outrageous attacks” that crossed the line.
“We’ve had a sitting senator, who also happens to be running for president, suggest that I’m the leading state sponsor of terrorism,” Obama said during a press conference from Ethiopia. “Maybe this is just an effort to push Mr. Trump out of the headlines, but it’s not the kind of leadership that is needed for America right now.”
During the round table, Cruz said Obama had “belittled and attacked” his remarks, and invited the president to debate the merits of the deal.
…
“Yesterday, I invited President Obama to participate in a debate, I would be happy to debate him … anywhere in the country in the next 60 days, to discuss the substance of this deal. If he believes that this deal can be defended, I would encourage him to defend it in front of the American people,” Cruz said. “If he’s unwilling to do so, then he can send as his proxy Secretary of State John Kerry because on the merits, this deal is catastrophic for the American people” (Collins 1,2).
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican presidential candidate, argued on Twitter that Justice Antonin Scalia should not be replaced until after the winner of the 2016 presidential election takes office.
“Justice Scalia was an American hero. We owe it to him, & the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement.”
On Facebook, Mr. Cruz hailed Justice Scalia as “a stalwart defender of the Constitution” and an opponent of “judicial activism” who played an important role in upholding the Second Amendment.
“He was an unrelenting defender of religious liberty, free speech, federalism, the constitutional separation of powers, and private property rights,” Mr. Cruz wrote. “All liberty-loving Americans should be in mourning” (Stack 1).
In June 2016, Cruz blamed the Obama administration for the Orlando nightclub shooting, reasoning that it did not track the perpetrator Omar Mateen properly while he was on the terrorist watch-list. Following the terrorist attack on Nice, France, Cruz said in a statement that the country was at risk as a result of the Obama administration having a "willful blindness" to radical Islamists. With the passing of Fidel Castro in November, Cruz charged Obama with celebrating and lionizing Castro in public statements he made addressing the death. On December 28, after Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech defending the U.S.'s decision to allow a U.N. resolution to pass that condemned Israeli settlements "on land meant to be part of a future Palestinian state", Cruz denounced the speech as "disgraceful", and said that history would remember Obama and Kerry as "relentless enemies of Israel". Cruz also accused the Obama administration of having a "radical anti-Israel agenda" (Comments 1).
Battling Trump
From his home at Mar-a-Lago, Donald J. Trump stirred up new controversy this week in the Republican presidential primary — and new alarm among party leaders that the front-runner for the nomination will drive away women from candidates running farther down the ballot in the fall.
All week, Mr. Trump has slowly escalated a war of words on Twitter against Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, his main competition in the Republican race, based on an ad by a “super PAC” started by people who want to stop the New York developer from getting the nomination. The spot featured an old nude photo shoot of Mr. Trump’s wife Melania Trump, a former model, posing on his jet.
Mr. Cruz has no affiliation with the super PAC, and he has denounced the ad. But Mr. Trump has continued to express disbelief. After threatening to “spill the beans” on Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz, who suffered a bout of depression years ago, he retweeted a post from someone who made a side-by-side photo comparison of Mrs. Cruz at an unflattering angle, and Mrs. Trump.
On Wednesday, Mr. Cruz repeatedly quoted from the movie “The American President” to defend his wife, as she held an event and faced questions about Mr. Trump’s threats. But that was before Mr. Trump’s Twitter post with the pictures of the two women. And Mr. Cruz had finally had enough.
Calling Mr. Trump a “sniveling coward,” Mr. Cruz told his rival to “leave Heidi the hell alone” (Haberman 1).
Frank Bruni’s Scorn
He spoke out of both sides of his scowl, itching to be the voice of the common man but equally eager to demonstrate what a highfalutin, Harvard-trained intellect he possessed. He wed a populist message to a plummy vocabulary. And while the line separating smart and smart aleck isn’t all that thin or blurry, he never could stay on the winning side of it.
He wore cowboy boots, but his favorites are made of ostrich.
Two peacocks in a pod, he and Trump, and what ghastly plumage they showed on Tuesday.
Trump somehow saw fit to bring up a National Enquirer story linking Cruz’s father to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Cruz exploded, branding Trump a “pathological liar” and “serial philanderer.” He also brought up an interview from many years ago in which Trump told Howard Stern that his effort to steer clear of sexually transmitted diseases was his “personal Vietnam.”
Where was this rant six months ago, when the Republican field was crowded and Cruz played footsie with Trump? Back then he was wagering that Trump would fade, and he wanted to be in a friendly position to inherit the billionaire’s supporters.
But by Tuesday, Trump was the main obstacle between Cruz and the Republican presidential nomination, and Cruz has just one true compass: his own advancement.
The nakedness of his vanity and transparency of his ambition were always his biggest problem. He routinely excoriated other politicians for self-centeredness while repeatedly hogging center stage, his remarks interminable — after his Iowa victory, for example, or when he presumptuously introduced Carly Fiorina as his running mate — and his pauses so theatrically drawn out that you could watch the entirety of “The Revenant” during some of them.
He trashed “the establishment” and wore its rejection of him as a badge of honor only until it stopped rejecting him and its help was his best hope to wrest the nomination away from Trump. At that point he did dizzy cartwheels over every prominent endorsement that came his way.
He took great pride in an adversarial relationship with the media, decreeing us irrelevant, until he went in hunt of a fresh excuse for losing to Trump and decided over the last few days that it was all our fault. We didn’t matter and then we did, depending on which estimation flattered him.
He purported to be more high-minded than his peers but pettily mocked Michelle Obama for urging schoolchildren to eat leafy greens.
When Heidi Cruz is first lady, he pledged, “French fries are coming back to the cafeteria.” Heidi Cruz is not going to be first lady, so she’ll need some other platform for the promotion of calorie bombs and second chins.
And where in her husband was the humility that a Christian faith as frequently proclaimed as his should encompass? It wasn’t evident when he stormed into the Senate in early 2013, an upstart intent on upstaging the veterans.
There were flickers of it on Tuesday night, as he conceded defeat not just in Indiana but in the presidential contest, announcing that he was suspending his campaign “with a heavy heart.” He articulated gratitude to those Americans — no small number of them — who had buoyed him.
…
He left Trump out of his remarks. There were no congratulations. There was no indication of whether he’d publicly back Trump in the months to come. There was nothing to purge the memory of what he’d said earlier Tuesday, when he described Trump as “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.” Yes, we have, and so has he, every day, in the mirror.
That’s why he’ll undoubtedly be back to try for the presidency again. But this bid is moribund. It’s time for Cruz to rest in peevishness (Bruni 2-4).
Works cited:
Bruni, Frank. “Ted Cruz’s Bitter End.” New York Times, May 3, 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/op...
Calibressi, Massimo. “Ted Cruz Failed To Disclose Ties To Caribbean Holding Company.” Time, October 18, 2013. Net. https://swampland.time.com/2013/10/18...
Collins, Eliza. “Cruz Stands by Calling Obama a Sponsor of Terrorism.” Politico, July 29, 2015. Net. https://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...
“Comments on President Obama.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cru...
Haberman, Maggie. “Arguments Get Personal between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.”
New York Times, March 25, 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/politics/firs...
Hartfield, Elizabeth. “Ted Cruz Wins In Texas GOP Senate Runoff.” ABC News, August 1, 2012. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...
Jacobson, Louis. “Ted Cruz Says He's Opposed Shutdowns, but He Hasn't Always.” Politifact, January 22, 2018. Net. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks...
Kirby, Jen. Ted Cruz, Mascot of the 2013 Shutdown, Says He Has “Consistently Opposed Shutdowns.” Vox, January 22, 2018. Net. https://www.vox.com/2018/1/22/1692116...
McIntire, Mike. “Ted Cruz Didn’t Report Goldman Sachs Loan in a Senate Race.” New York Times, January 13, 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us...
Stack, Liam. “Ted Cruz Says President Obama Should Not Name Scalia’s Successor.” New York Times, February 13. 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/live/supreme-...
“Ted Cruz.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cru...
Wright, Austin. “Ted Cruz the Senator: Heard but Not Seen.” Politico, April 21, 2015. Net. https://web.archive.org/web/201504240...
In the past several weeks victory for Cruz, the former solicitor general, had begun to look increasingly likely, with polls showing him ahead of Dewhurst, and major national Tea Party stars like Sarah Palin and Sen. Jim DeMint turning out to campaign for him in the final days leading up to the runoff. However, for the bulk of the race Cruz had been the underdog, lacking in the wealth and name recognition enjoyed by Dewhurst, who has been the lieutenant governor under Rick Perry since 2003.
While Cruz, 41, may have had the majority of national star power on his side, Dewhurst, 66, had the backing of many in the Texas political establishment, including Perry. Dewhurst enjoyed a huge financial advantage over Cruz.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Dewhurst poured $11 million of his own personal fortune- he founded a successful energy company called Falcon Seaboard- into his campaign, spending a total of $19 million, as compared to Cruz's $7 million spent. But ultimately Dewhurst's wallet was no match for Cruz's political prowess.
Cruz painted his opponent as a moderate who would be willing, if not eager, to compromise with Democrats in Congress. Dewhurst has a very conservative record- he's anti-abortion rights, he supports a balanced budget amendment, and on Monday morning he stopped by a Chick-Fil-A to show his support for the restaurant embroiled in a controversy regarding their president's recent comments on gay marriage. Nevertheless, Cruz and his supporters pointed to compromises Dewhurst had made with Democrats in the state legislature, and argued that his record was merely a reflection of Rick Perry's conservative agenda and did not provide an accurate representation of Dewhurst's own governing style (Hartfield 1-2).
In the November 6 general election, Cruz faced Democratic nominee Paul Sadler, an attorney and a former state representative from Henderson, in east Texas. Cruz won with 4.5 million votes (56.4%) to Sadler's 3.2 million (40.6%). According to a poll by Cruz's pollster Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research, Cruz received 40% of the Hispanic vote, outperforming Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney among Hispanics in Texas (Ted 4).
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz potentially violated ethics rules by failing to publicly disclose his financial relationship with a Caribbean-based holding company during the 2012 campaign, a review of financial disclosure and company documents by TIME shows. The relationship originated with a $6,000 investment Cruz made more than a decade ago in a Jamaican private equity firm founded by his college roommate.
When Cruz later reported the financial relationship in 2013, he failed to comply with Senate rules requiring full identification of the holding company and its location, triggering an inquiry by Senate Select Committee on Ethics staff and a second amended disclosure. After additional inquiries by TIME this week, Cruz said he is now in the process making further corrections to his disclosure (Calibressi 1).
As Ted Cruz tells it, the story of how he financed his upstart campaign for the United States Senate four years ago is an endearing example of loyalty and shared sacrifice between a married couple.
“Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign,” he says he told his wife, Heidi, who readily agreed.
But the couple’s decision to pump more than $1 million into Mr. Cruz’s successful Tea Party-darling Senate bid in Texas was made easier by a large loan from Goldman Sachs, where Mrs. Cruz works. That loan was not disclosed in campaign finance reports.
Those reports show that in the critical weeks before the May 2012 Republican primary, Mr. Cruz — currently a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination — put “personal funds” totaling $960,000 into his Senate campaign. Two months later, shortly before a scheduled runoff election, he added more, bringing the total to $1.2 million — “which is all we had saved,” as Mr. Cruz described it in an interview with The New York Times several years ago.
A review of personal financial disclosures that Mr. Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of assets that would have accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign. What it does show, however, is that in the first half of 2012, Ted and Heidi Cruz obtained the low-interest loan from Goldman Sachs, as well as another one from Citibank. The loans totaled as much as $750,000 and eventually increased to a maximum of $1 million before being paid down later that year. There is no explanation of their purpose.
Neither loan appears in reports the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee filed with the Federal Election Commission, in which candidates are required to disclose the source of money they borrow to finance their campaigns. Other campaigns have been investigated and fined for failing to make such disclosures, which are intended to inform voters and prevent candidates from receiving special treatment from lenders. There is no evidence that the Cruzes got a break on their loans.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz’s presidential campaign, Catherine Frazier, acknowledged that the loan from Goldman Sachs, drawn against the value of the Cruzes’ brokerage account, was a source of money for the Senate race. Ms. Frazier added that Mr. Cruz also sold stocks and liquidated savings, but she did not address whether the Citibank loan was used.
The failure to report the Goldman Sachs loan, for as much as $500,000, was “inadvertent,” she said, adding that the campaign would file corrected reports as necessary. Ms. Frazier said there had been no attempt to hide anything (McIntire 1-2).
Hey, Notice Me!
Back in 2013, Cruz -- then a junior member of the Senate’s minority party -- had tried to end funding for the Affordable Care Act. He pushed for language to defund Obamacare in spending bills, which would have forced then-President Barack Obama to choose between keeping the government open and crippling his signature legislative achievement.
As the high-stakes legislative game played out, Obama and his fellow Democrats refused to agree to gut the law, and the Republicans, as a minority party, didn’t have the numbers to force their will. Following a 16-day shutdown, lawmakers voted to fund both the government and the Affordable Care Act.
Cruz was widely identified at the time as the leader of the defunding effort. Most famously, Cruz spoke about defunding Obamacare on the Senate floor during a 21-hour speech, punctuated by Green Eggs and Ham as a bedtime story for his children.
Many in Cruz’s own party, even those sympathetic with his goals, blamed him for a tactical blunder. During the spending impasse, his Republican colleagues launched "a barrage of hostile questions" at a GOP-only lunch, questioning whether Cruz had thought through the endgame.
…
Cruz … [maintained] that his motivation was not to keep the government from being funded, but rather to defund Obamacare, and that the only reason people believe this is because of the biased media (Jacobson 1-2).
Republicans were largely blamed for the shutdown. Cruz’s theatrics inspired the ire not just of Democrats, but of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, who felt Cruz knew his self-righteous gambit was doomed to fail, but went ahead with it anyway to raise his own political profile at his party’s expense. … (Kirby 2, 3).
Ted Cruz came to Washington two-and-a-half years ago pledging to be the anti-senator. But he’s been more like the no-show senator.
The Texas Republican seriously lags most of his colleagues in attending hearings and casting votes in what has been a Senate career long on rhetoric and short on Senate business.
He’s skipped the vast majority of Armed Services Committee hearings, is below-average in attendance on his other major committees and ranks 97th during the first three months of this year in showing up for roll call votes on the Senate floor.
…
Last month, Cruz dismissed concerns about all the Armed Services Committee hearings he’s missed over the past few months by saying he’s been busy planning a presidential campaign. But a POLITICO review has found that his attendance problems date back to his first few months as a senator in 2013, when he skipped congressional hearings on immigration, the war in Afghanistan and across-the-board spending cuts.
…
“Sen. Cruz remains incredibly active on the issues important to the 27 million Texans he represents and takes care to make sure his constituents know where he stands on these matters,” [Cruz’s communications director, Amanda] Carpenter said in a statement. “In a short time, Sen. Cruz has become a leading voice in our debates about commerce, constitutional rights and national security and will continue advocating ways to make Americans more prosperous and free.”
…
For Cruz, another priority has been speaking out on conservative causes around the country — a clearly different way to leverage his influence as a senator and, not coincidentally, pump up his name recognition among the kind of activists who can propel a campaign for higher office.
For instance, on March 6, 2014, Cruz was at National Harbor, Md., roaring to an audience of defense-minded conservative voters organized by Breitbart News about U.S. missteps in dealing with Iran, Israel and the bloody civil war in Syria. “What this administration doesn’t understand is that weakness and appeasement only invite military conflict,” he thundered.
Meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill that day, other members of the Armed Services Committee were asking tough questions of the top U.S. general in the Middle East, covering violence in Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan and the “perennial fight against Al-Qaeda,” according to transcripts (Wright 1,2).
Attack Obama, Attack, Attack!
According to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is essentially financing terrorism. And he’s not backing down after the president called his comments “outrageous.”
“If this deal is consummated, it will make the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” Cruz said during a round table Tuesday. “Billions of dollars under control of this administration will flow into the hands of jihadists who will use that money to murder Americans, to murder Israelis, to murder Europeans.”
Cruz has said the remarks before.
On Monday, Obama responded to criticism of the deal. He also addressed Cruz’s comments, and others from members of GOP lawmakers, calling them “outrageous attacks” that crossed the line.
“We’ve had a sitting senator, who also happens to be running for president, suggest that I’m the leading state sponsor of terrorism,” Obama said during a press conference from Ethiopia. “Maybe this is just an effort to push Mr. Trump out of the headlines, but it’s not the kind of leadership that is needed for America right now.”
During the round table, Cruz said Obama had “belittled and attacked” his remarks, and invited the president to debate the merits of the deal.
…
“Yesterday, I invited President Obama to participate in a debate, I would be happy to debate him … anywhere in the country in the next 60 days, to discuss the substance of this deal. If he believes that this deal can be defended, I would encourage him to defend it in front of the American people,” Cruz said. “If he’s unwilling to do so, then he can send as his proxy Secretary of State John Kerry because on the merits, this deal is catastrophic for the American people” (Collins 1,2).
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican presidential candidate, argued on Twitter that Justice Antonin Scalia should not be replaced until after the winner of the 2016 presidential election takes office.
“Justice Scalia was an American hero. We owe it to him, & the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement.”
On Facebook, Mr. Cruz hailed Justice Scalia as “a stalwart defender of the Constitution” and an opponent of “judicial activism” who played an important role in upholding the Second Amendment.
“He was an unrelenting defender of religious liberty, free speech, federalism, the constitutional separation of powers, and private property rights,” Mr. Cruz wrote. “All liberty-loving Americans should be in mourning” (Stack 1).
In June 2016, Cruz blamed the Obama administration for the Orlando nightclub shooting, reasoning that it did not track the perpetrator Omar Mateen properly while he was on the terrorist watch-list. Following the terrorist attack on Nice, France, Cruz said in a statement that the country was at risk as a result of the Obama administration having a "willful blindness" to radical Islamists. With the passing of Fidel Castro in November, Cruz charged Obama with celebrating and lionizing Castro in public statements he made addressing the death. On December 28, after Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech defending the U.S.'s decision to allow a U.N. resolution to pass that condemned Israeli settlements "on land meant to be part of a future Palestinian state", Cruz denounced the speech as "disgraceful", and said that history would remember Obama and Kerry as "relentless enemies of Israel". Cruz also accused the Obama administration of having a "radical anti-Israel agenda" (Comments 1).
Battling Trump
From his home at Mar-a-Lago, Donald J. Trump stirred up new controversy this week in the Republican presidential primary — and new alarm among party leaders that the front-runner for the nomination will drive away women from candidates running farther down the ballot in the fall.
All week, Mr. Trump has slowly escalated a war of words on Twitter against Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, his main competition in the Republican race, based on an ad by a “super PAC” started by people who want to stop the New York developer from getting the nomination. The spot featured an old nude photo shoot of Mr. Trump’s wife Melania Trump, a former model, posing on his jet.
Mr. Cruz has no affiliation with the super PAC, and he has denounced the ad. But Mr. Trump has continued to express disbelief. After threatening to “spill the beans” on Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz, who suffered a bout of depression years ago, he retweeted a post from someone who made a side-by-side photo comparison of Mrs. Cruz at an unflattering angle, and Mrs. Trump.
On Wednesday, Mr. Cruz repeatedly quoted from the movie “The American President” to defend his wife, as she held an event and faced questions about Mr. Trump’s threats. But that was before Mr. Trump’s Twitter post with the pictures of the two women. And Mr. Cruz had finally had enough.
Calling Mr. Trump a “sniveling coward,” Mr. Cruz told his rival to “leave Heidi the hell alone” (Haberman 1).
Frank Bruni’s Scorn
He spoke out of both sides of his scowl, itching to be the voice of the common man but equally eager to demonstrate what a highfalutin, Harvard-trained intellect he possessed. He wed a populist message to a plummy vocabulary. And while the line separating smart and smart aleck isn’t all that thin or blurry, he never could stay on the winning side of it.
He wore cowboy boots, but his favorites are made of ostrich.
Two peacocks in a pod, he and Trump, and what ghastly plumage they showed on Tuesday.
Trump somehow saw fit to bring up a National Enquirer story linking Cruz’s father to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Cruz exploded, branding Trump a “pathological liar” and “serial philanderer.” He also brought up an interview from many years ago in which Trump told Howard Stern that his effort to steer clear of sexually transmitted diseases was his “personal Vietnam.”
Where was this rant six months ago, when the Republican field was crowded and Cruz played footsie with Trump? Back then he was wagering that Trump would fade, and he wanted to be in a friendly position to inherit the billionaire’s supporters.
But by Tuesday, Trump was the main obstacle between Cruz and the Republican presidential nomination, and Cruz has just one true compass: his own advancement.
The nakedness of his vanity and transparency of his ambition were always his biggest problem. He routinely excoriated other politicians for self-centeredness while repeatedly hogging center stage, his remarks interminable — after his Iowa victory, for example, or when he presumptuously introduced Carly Fiorina as his running mate — and his pauses so theatrically drawn out that you could watch the entirety of “The Revenant” during some of them.
He trashed “the establishment” and wore its rejection of him as a badge of honor only until it stopped rejecting him and its help was his best hope to wrest the nomination away from Trump. At that point he did dizzy cartwheels over every prominent endorsement that came his way.
He took great pride in an adversarial relationship with the media, decreeing us irrelevant, until he went in hunt of a fresh excuse for losing to Trump and decided over the last few days that it was all our fault. We didn’t matter and then we did, depending on which estimation flattered him.
He purported to be more high-minded than his peers but pettily mocked Michelle Obama for urging schoolchildren to eat leafy greens.
When Heidi Cruz is first lady, he pledged, “French fries are coming back to the cafeteria.” Heidi Cruz is not going to be first lady, so she’ll need some other platform for the promotion of calorie bombs and second chins.
And where in her husband was the humility that a Christian faith as frequently proclaimed as his should encompass? It wasn’t evident when he stormed into the Senate in early 2013, an upstart intent on upstaging the veterans.
There were flickers of it on Tuesday night, as he conceded defeat not just in Indiana but in the presidential contest, announcing that he was suspending his campaign “with a heavy heart.” He articulated gratitude to those Americans — no small number of them — who had buoyed him.
…
He left Trump out of his remarks. There were no congratulations. There was no indication of whether he’d publicly back Trump in the months to come. There was nothing to purge the memory of what he’d said earlier Tuesday, when he described Trump as “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.” Yes, we have, and so has he, every day, in the mirror.
That’s why he’ll undoubtedly be back to try for the presidency again. But this bid is moribund. It’s time for Cruz to rest in peevishness (Bruni 2-4).
Works cited:
Bruni, Frank. “Ted Cruz’s Bitter End.” New York Times, May 3, 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/op...
Calibressi, Massimo. “Ted Cruz Failed To Disclose Ties To Caribbean Holding Company.” Time, October 18, 2013. Net. https://swampland.time.com/2013/10/18...
Collins, Eliza. “Cruz Stands by Calling Obama a Sponsor of Terrorism.” Politico, July 29, 2015. Net. https://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...
“Comments on President Obama.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cru...
Haberman, Maggie. “Arguments Get Personal between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.”
New York Times, March 25, 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/politics/firs...
Hartfield, Elizabeth. “Ted Cruz Wins In Texas GOP Senate Runoff.” ABC News, August 1, 2012. Net. https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...
Jacobson, Louis. “Ted Cruz Says He's Opposed Shutdowns, but He Hasn't Always.” Politifact, January 22, 2018. Net. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks...
Kirby, Jen. Ted Cruz, Mascot of the 2013 Shutdown, Says He Has “Consistently Opposed Shutdowns.” Vox, January 22, 2018. Net. https://www.vox.com/2018/1/22/1692116...
McIntire, Mike. “Ted Cruz Didn’t Report Goldman Sachs Loan in a Senate Race.” New York Times, January 13, 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us...
Stack, Liam. “Ted Cruz Says President Obama Should Not Name Scalia’s Successor.” New York Times, February 13. 2016. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/live/supreme-...
“Ted Cruz.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cru...
Wright, Austin. “Ted Cruz the Senator: Heard but Not Seen.” Politico, April 21, 2015. Net. https://web.archive.org/web/201504240...
