Senator Lindsey Graham defended his refusal to abandon Donald Trump after the deadly attack on Capitol Hill, saying that although the former president has “a dark side … what I’m trying to do is just enjoy the magic”.
He also said that Trump’s continued control over the Republican party could make it “bigger, it can make it stronger, it can make it more diverse. And it could also destroy you. “
The South Carolina Republican initially said that the United States could “count [him] out ”to support Trump after the riot, but he quickly abandoned any demonstration of independence.
On Sunday, he was speaking to Axios on HBO at the end of a weekend when Trump reportedly told the Republican Party to stop raising funds under his name and was also preparing to leave Florida for the first time since leaving office. . to visit New York, his hometown.
Trump maintains firm control over his party, leading the polls for candidates for president in 2024. He is eligible to run for office again because he was acquitted in his second impeachment trial, on charges of inciting the Capitol riot.
Five people, including a policeman, died as a direct result of the invasion of Congress by a crowd that Trump said to “fight like hell” in support of his attempt to undo the defeat in the elections for Joe Biden.
Graham was one of 43 Republicans who voted for absolution.
“Donald Trump was my friend before the riot,” he said of a man who attacked him violently in the 2016 Republican primaries and who he said would destroy the party if he became his nominee. The senator turned as soon as Trump took power, to become one of his closest and most anxious allies.
“I am trying to maintain a relationship with him after the turmoil,” he said. “I still consider him a friend. What happened was a dark day in American history. And let’s move on. “
Graham said the best way for Republicans to do this is “with Trump, not without Trump.”
Jonathan Swan countered that Trump “is still telling everyone that he won in a landslide”, a lie repeatedly expelled from the court and that put the former president in legal danger.
“I tell him every day that he wants to hear,” said Graham, “that I think the main reason he probably lost in Arizona was because he beat up the dead man named John McCain.”
McCain, a senator from Arizona, nominated for the presidency in 2008 and a close friend and ally of Graham, never accepted Trump as the face of his party. Trump attacked McCain fiercely, even above his record in the Vietnam War, in which McCain endured captivity and torture while Trump avoided enlistment.
Asked if he could abandon Trump because he cannot be re-elected until 2026, Graham said: “Yes, I could reject him tomorrow … I could say that you know it’s over, it’s done. This is very easy.
“The difficult thing is to get a movement that I think is good for the country, to try to get the leader of the movement, who has a lot of problems for him and for the party, and see if it can work.
‘Mitt Romney [the 2012 nominee] did not do that, John McCain did not. There is something about Trump. There is a dark side. And there is some magic there. What I’m trying to do is just enjoy the magic.
“For me, Donald Trump is a kind of cross between Jesse Helms, Ronald Reagan and PT Barnum. I mean, just bigger than life. “
Helms, a North Carolina senator who died in 2008, was a hard-line conservative and segregationist, in the words of a columnist on death, a “blatant racist”. PT Barnum was a businessman, politician, controversial and circus businessman of the 19th century.
Trump, Graham insisted, “could make the Republican Party something that no one else I know could do. It can make it bigger, it can make it stronger, it can make it more diverse. And it could also destroy you. “