It takes a big person to admit defeat — or sometimes it just takes Lindsey Graham. Late Tuesday night, as Mediaite reports, a visibly deflated Graham spoke with NBC News in the midst of Election Night and was forced to acknowledge that the possible “Red Wave” we’ve been hearing about for months now did not happen. (But Michael Moore already knew that.)
The South Carolina senator beamed into a chat with the NBC News team, including Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie, though he looked as if he’d rather be undergoing dental surgery. Guthrie didn’t waste any time getting right down to business and suggesting that they talk about the senatorial race in New Hampshire, where incumbent Democrat Maggie Hassan kept her seat with 54 percent of the vote, whereas Republican challenger/election denier Donald Bolduc scooped up just 44.1 percent of the votes.
“Here’s one where Republicans were feeling kinda good recently,” Guthrie said. “But you do have General Bolduc who — it was controversial, election denier, from that wing of the party. How are you reading these tea leaves?”
Graham, who seemed a little bit at a loss for any positive words, simply replied that, “If you run that far behind your governor candidate, you probably made a mistake, so… Uh, General Bolduc served this country well, but [incumbent Republican governor Chris] Sununu won big.. But definitely not a Republican wave, that’s for darn sure.”
But the reporters weren’t about to let Graham get off that easily — or ignore what Holt described as The Donald Trump Effect. “There have been a couple of conversations around this table as it’s become apparent there’s not going to be a wave here,” Holt said. “And the question of whether his appearances along the way have actually hurt Republicans. Do you give that any credence?”
“Not really,” Graham replied, seemingly desperate to not have to discuss the T word. “I think it was a referendum on Biden. You know, if we take back the House and we get the Senate majority, that’s a very good night. A wave would have been like New Hampshire and Colorado. So, you know, hats off to the Democrats. They performed well in a lot of these swing districts… But at the end of the day guys, if we take the House and the Senate, we’re going to have to sit down as a country and figure out what to do with it.”
Graham also had a piece of “unsolicited advice” for Joe Biden:
If we do take the House and we do take the Senate, let’s all go to the border and see if we can find a way to fix it. I’ve got a bill with Elizabeth Warren, believe it or not, to regulate social media and maybe we could do something in the energy and the energy space. So if it’s a divided government, maybe something good can come of it.
Yes, because that has worked out so well in the past.
You can watch the full segment above.
(Via Mediaite)