Dana Milbank wrote a touching eulogy for the late Senator Lindsey Graham in the Washington Post.
“We lost two mavericks within a week.
“On Saturday, we lost the legendary John McCain.
“On Tuesday, we lost his loyal sidekick, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham.
“Graham remains alive and well, but after serving for two decades as Robin to McCain’s Batman, Graham buried whatever remained of his own reputation for iconoclasm even before his partner’s funeral.
“On Tuesday, Graham took a seat on the couch of “Fox & Friends,” President Trump’s favorite show, and sealed his transition from apostate to Trump apparatchik.
“Word of caution to the public,” he said. “A lot of people try to convict President Trump. Don’t be so fast. I have seen no evidence of collusion after two years.” Having echoed Trump’s no-collusion line (as if that were the lone issue), Graham, a former military lawyer, picked up Trump’s attack on the justice system: “Plenty of corruption at the Department of Justice and the FBI. Should be stunning. Not one Democrat seems to care.”
“From there, the South Carolina Republican echoed all of Trump’s attacks against the Russia investigation: “They had a bias against Trump for [Hillary] Clinton . . . They gave a politically corrupt document to get a warrant . . . Christopher Steele was on the payroll of the Democratic Party.” He parroted Trump’s line that Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to help Clinton, not Trump: “Russia was involved in our election . . . in terms of developing this dossier.”
“Incredibly, Graham even joined the “lock her up” movement. “No American would get the same treatment she did. If you were charged or suspected of this kind of misconduct, you would be in jail now….”
“This came after Graham abandoned his previous support of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump wants to fire as a likely precursor to ending special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. A year ago, Graham declared himself “100 percent behind Jeff Sessions” and vowed “holy hell” if Sessions was fired.
“But now, Graham says “we need an attorney general that can work with the president.” This week, he even alleged on CBS News that Sessions “blindsided” Trump with “zero-tolerance” family separations — as though that policy wasn’t a Trump signature.
“Graham previously described Trump as a “jackass” and “unfit for office.” He began his pivot after the election, but intensified his embrace of Trump as illness kept McCain from Washington. “If you don’t like me working with President Trump to make the world a better place, I don’t give a shit,” he said on CNN in June. This week, he demurred on renaming a Senate building for his friend, and though displeased by Trump’s posthumous insults of McCain, he said it is the president’s right “to feel any way he’d like.”
“No longer protected by McCain, he seems to have lost that famous McCain courage. It is difficult to avoid the impression that, since McCain’s illness, he has found a new patron. “I never did anything politically of consequence without John,” Graham acknowledged this week. “I mean all of the big stuff, campaign finance, climate change, Iraq, you name it. I was by John’s side. I was his wingman.”
“Yet, now, he is serving as wingman to a president who takes the opposite view on each of those issues.”
RIP, Senator Graham, now Trump’s obedient servant.

Brilliant!
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A friend of mine, Brooke Baker Belk, on John McCain: “I would rather argue all my life with a hero than follow a fool.”
Re Agent Orange: Imagine–hey, this is, I know, a wild sort of pipe dream–having a President whom you could ADMIRE.
If you owned a gas station and were choosing someone to run it, you would vet that person more carefully than we do the people we put into this office. This aspect of our system is very, very dangerous.
How many more of these clowns do we get? Have we learned our lesson yet? This puts us at a great disadvantage vis-à-vis those in the world who are not our friends.
Every four years, every department and agency–Defense, Intelligence, Commerce, Education, and so on, must get used to some new bozo, often one who knows nothing and is a first-class narcissist. The combination of ignorance and arrogance is particularly toxic. Perhaps now we have reached the absolute bottom. We’ve seen the worst that can happen. We can get the likes of Agent Orange.
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Imagine—I can’t—a president who attacks and ridicules the Department of Justice.
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Image the president that called the media “the enemy of the people”.
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Lloyd,
That would never happen in America!
Only in the old Soviet Union!
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Then Trump must be a reincarnation of Stalin.
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What kind of imbecile goes to war with his own justice department and intelligence services? Well, the kind we have. But this is a BIG MISTAKE. He’s toast. It’s just a matter of time.
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The walls are closing in on him.
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Pence was a former right wing radio spewer. Thank goodness Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t become president. What’s next President Alex Jones or Steven Seagal?
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The Democrats who served as McCain’s pallbearers tells us something about the man: Warren Beaty, Joe Biden, Russ Feingold, Gary Hart and Sheldon Whitehouse.
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It will perhaps inspire another Jim Carrey piece, though he just did Graham. Maybe a bit too soon.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5b814137e4b034858600cfa4/amp
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Graham has joined the ranks of the other spineless weasels in the Republican party without having to face any shameful glances of his old ally, John McCain.
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Graham waited for his mentor to lie dying before he became Trump’s stooge.
Trump must have some powerful dirt on him.
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I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never really liked or trusted Graham but now I know why. He changes his positions like a chameleon.
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This is exactly why the people who insist it is more important to tear down the evil Democrats than to remove the Republicans from power are complicit in Trump’s rise.
The Republicans are never going to halt Trump from doing whatever he wants to do. Trump already told us that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and the entire Republican Party would be fine with it.
Let’s all concede that the Democrats are far from perfect. They are not perfect. Neither were the opponents of Mussolini and Hitler. There will never be perfect opposition to Trump.
It is now time to get out and vote to elect the progressive Democrat you want in the primary and elect every Democrat running for House or Senate in the general election.
The Democrats need to control committees in order to be able to limit Trump’s power. Even conservative Dems in Congress vote to keep the leadership positions in Democrat hands.
The only Democrat I recall who tried to make sure the other party remained in power is Andrew Cuomo, who worked very hard to make sure the Albany Senate stayed in the hands of Republicans by working hard to elect the Democrats who would caucus with the Republicans so they could control all aspect of the Senate and remain in power!
Any Democrat, like Cuomo’s favorite handpicked “Democrats” in Albany, who vote to keep the House and Senate in Republican control should be defeated.
It is fine to vote against any Democrat who promises to keep Mitch McConnell in charge. It is fine to vote against any Democrat who promises to keep Paul Ryan’s successor in charge of the House.
But unless they plan to caucus with the Republicans to keep the Republicans in power the way that Andrew Cuomo’s favorite Democrats, do, then voting for the Democrat is the only way to stop this country’s slide into autocracy or fascism.
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Well said. These ideological progressive purists (like Jimmy Dore) drive me crazy. They are still ranting and raving against Hillary and seem to contend that we are better off with Trump because Trump will force us to become more progressive. Huh? I agree with Jimmy Dore on so many other issues but not when it comes to voting for Hillary. What the heck else could you do in 2016? Waste a vote on Jill Stein who polled at 2% and help Trump to become president. The only sensible thing to do was to vote for Hillary (see Bernie, Chomsky, Thomas Frank). I truly think that Hillary would have rose to the challenge and she would have surprised us and been much better than anticipated. The ideological purists would have bashed FDR and scorned him as a millionaire phony. But once in office, FDR rose to the challenge and became a very progressive president in most ways.
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The ideological purists are making the completely ridiculous argument that no one is allowed to criticize Trump until the Democrats “get their own house in order”.
If any criticism of Trump is made, the ideological purists immediately try to shut it down because — they claim — Democrats are not allowed to criticize Trump until all their own politicians are perfect.
Of course, hypocrites as they are, they believe that progressives can criticize Democrats non-stop even if their own progressive leaders aren’t perfect. Being consistent is not required. Bashing Democrats and not allowing criticism of Trump is what must be done, they say, until the Democrats get their own house in order. But the progressives don’t have to be perfect to allow them to attack Democrats.
Anyone who is still saying – as the ideological purists posted on here non-stop during 2016 — that evil Hillary Clinton was “just as bad” or “no different” than Trump has jumped the shark from having an opinion to being outright dishonest.
Trump deserves criticism. He is being enabled by the Republicans. And Trump is being enabled by the ideological purists on the left who insist that absolutely no criticism of Trump is allowed until the Democrats “get their house in order”.
I can’t think of any instance where the imperfect humans we are must remain silent if we see evil being done to other people. But according to the ideological purists’ philosophy, we must turn the other way and allow evil to happen without speaking out until we know have reached perfection in our own lives. Seriously, this is the kind of propaganda supported by fascists.
Being ideologically pure is one thing. Defending Trump from all attacks except to call him “orange haired” or “oafish” while insisting that no real criticism of Trump is allowed until the Democrats are perfect is not being ideologically pure. It is being a hypocrite. And it is being complicit with the autocratic takeover of our democracy.
They might be able to blame the democrats for not offering better candidates, but they have no one to blame but themselves for insisting that Trump may not be criticized. That is on them.
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I can only add, get out and work for better representation in the next election. It does little good to just gripe here. Sharing ideas is great but working to rectify bad ones is better.
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Amen to G. W.’s comment. VOTE on Nov. 6.
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Vote and get someone to register and take them to their polling place.
I saw this groundwork in action on a street with few row houses, some of these section 8, and the rest of the block light industry. At most there were 10 people of voting age but all had more than one knock-on-the-door Obama volunteer working to get out the vote.
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Graham is a religious wackadoodle same as Pence. Pence is salivating at the thought of becoming the next President and Graham will likely be a Pence suck up.
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Trump has some serious inside stuff on Lindsey Graham.
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