What a difference a year—and a new book—makes. On January 6, 2021, Lindsey Graham spoke with Jonathan Martin, a reporter for The New York Times, about the calamitous events of that day and placed the blame squarely on outgoing president Donald Trump’s shoulders. Now, as Mediaite reports, Graham is changing his tune.
On Tuesday, Martin and his fellow Times writers Alexander Burns chatted with Anderson Cooper on CNN about their new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, and shared audio of their chat with Graham, who trashed Trump for the role he played in the Capitol insurrection while praising Joe Biden and expressing hope that he could right the ship:
We’ll actually come out of this thing stronger. Moments like this reset. It’ll take a while. People will calm down. People will [say] “I don’t want to be associated with that.” This is a group within a group. What this does, it’ll be a rallying effect for a while, where the country says, “We’re better than this.”
When Martin asked whether Graham thought that Biden could help in lifting the country back up, his response was forthright: “Totally. He’ll be maybe the best person to have, right? I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?”
When confronted with his own words on Thursday night by Fox News host Jesse Watters, however, Graham cried mea culpa. “I was wrong,” said the South Carolina senator. “I’ve known Joe for 30 years. He’s a nice guy, but he’s been a disaster as president. This was literally happening on the day of January the 6th and I was hoping that President Biden could bring us together. Common sense tells you you want the president to be successful. But not only has he failed to bring us together, he has made us less safe.”
You can watch Graham’s interview with Watters at Mediaite here.
(Via Mediaite)