With Lindsey Graham in Charge, Who Gives a Damn About the Truth?

South Carolina republican senator Lindsey Graham has talked out of both sides of his mouth on so many issues that it is nearly impossible to know which Lindsey Graham is the real thing.

Take the trial of president Donald Trump. To say Sen. Graham has flip-flopped is to be kind to him.

He has become Trump’s lap dog.

He said last month that he had made up his mind on the impeachment proceedings and he did not want to see any witnesses. But in 1999 during the impeachment and trial of president Bill Clinton, Sen. Graham wanted every witness to get the chance to testify.

Speaking on CBS’ “Face the Nation” in December, Graham said “I think what’s best for the country is to get this thing over with. I have clearly made up my mind. I’m not trying to hide the fact that I have disdain for the accusations in the process.”

“What you’re doing in the House is bad for the presidency. You’re impeaching the president of the United States in a matter of weeks, not months. I want to end it. I don’t want to legitimize it. I hate what they’re doing.”

“I want to end it. I have nothing but disdain for this.”

That was Graham in 2019.

This was Graham in 1999. He was a House Manager during the trial of president Bill Clinton.

“In every trial that there’s ever been in the Senate regarding impeachment, witnesses were called.”

He told the nation that if witnesses were prevented from testifying in 1999, it would leave all the work up to the House Judiciary Committee prior to the trial in the senate.

Graham said the “big problem” with that was that “impeachment in the House is not the trial. The trial takes place in the Senate, and without witnesses, the House won’t be able to present its case.”

“That would be bad for impeachment law, that would be against precedent and I hope that doesn’t happen here,” he said in 1999.

He characterized witness-free impeachment as “three days of lawyers talking to each other.”

“When you have a witness who was there, who was engaged in it, who was in the middle of it, telling you about what they were doing and why, that’s a totally different case ― and it’s the difference between getting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

He added that “the process is just as important as the result.”

What changed? Two things. In 1999 it was a Democrat being impeached by the Republicans. In 2020 it is a Republican being impeached and tried, and Lindsey Graham has become a lap dog to Donald Trump, incapable of telling the truth.