Trump enabler Lindsey Graham was ‘screaming’ during insurrection at Capitol
Sen. Sherrod Brown said Graham didn't respond well to Trump supporters storming the Capitol
After aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, election security, LGBTQ rights, and a myriad other issues over the last four years, Sen. Lindsey Graham didn’t respond well when a mob of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol last week.
The South Carolina Republican was reportedly seen “screaming” as the attackers, incited by Trump, swarmed the building.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) made the claims during an appearance on MSNBC yesterday, saying that he watched a maskless Graham scream at a police officer while being held in a room with other senators and staffers, The Hill reports.
“I heard when the 75 senators were confined in a room with about 75 staff people, Lindsey Graham with his mask off started screaming at one of the officers — I think it was one of the captains — saying, ‘How come you didn’t protect us? It’s doing your job,'” Brown said.
He added: “He was screaming at an officer. He had his mask off screaming at this officer from 5 feet away — I was maybe 10 feet on the other side — that the officer, the police, didn’t do enough to protect us.”
WATCH: @SenSherrodBrown reports publicly for the first time that during the attack on the Capitol he saw a maskless Sen. Graham scream at a Capitol police officer for not "doing enough" to protect the Senators pic.twitter.com/LKkfIkmfiH
— The Beat with Ari Melber on MSNBC 📺 (@TheBeatWithAri) January 12, 2021
Graham’s office said that the senator was “letting the sergeant-at-arms know his thoughts,” but didn’t confirm that Graham was screaming them.
Brown noted the irony of Graham complaining about something Trump had enabled, after spending years enabling Trump.
“This is the same Lindsey Graham that for five years — or for four years, he didn’t do it in the beginning — defended and argued for and encouraged and aided and abetted this president and all of his followers,” Brown said.
Graham famously switched from opposing Trump to being one of his biggest supporters in the Senate, a change best exemplified by a somewhat prophetic tweet from 2016, prior to Trump securing the Republican nomination, in which Graham wrote, “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…and we will deserve it.” (Republicans have since lost the House, Senate, and presidency.)
Twitter users responded less than kindly to the news of Graham’s response to the Trump-fueled insurrection.
“I would have expected @LindseyGrahamSC to be having a full blown case of the vapors on the fainting couch,” one user tweeted. “Good for him for standing up and yelling at the people that were trying to protect him from the monster he created.”
Another person noted that Graham “could have done more to protect the Senators than Capitol police officers. All he had to do was tell the truth about the election rather than calling the GA Sec. of State, or by repeating Trump’s lies about irregularities.”
Someone else wrote: “But these protestors just ‘needed to be heard’. They had feelings. Isn’t that what Graham & the other enablers in the @GOP are telling us?”
“Maybe if America screams at @LindseyGrahamSC that he’s not doing enough to protect our democracy he might get the hint,” one person said. “But probably not.”
“The Flower of the South wilts,” someone else tweeted.
“Graham would be the screamer,” another user added.
Graham is currently warning against plans to impeach Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection.
In a tweet yesterday, just days after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol and killed a police officer, he said, “In light of President Trump’s Thursday statement pledging an orderly transfer power and calling for healing in our nation, a second impeachment will do far more harm than good.”
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