Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), has been a rare, outspoken Republican critic of President Donald Trump. However, he is a big fan of Trump’s Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch. At a recent town hall (which many Republican Senators have dodged since Trump became President), Graham defended his stance on Gorsuch with some hypocritical remarks.
He faced down a cascade of boos and chants as he struggled to explain how Democrats were wrong for blocking Gorsuch, despite the Republican blockade of former President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland.
Obama was not entitled to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat, according to Graham, because:
“Scalia died in February after three primaries had started a week before the South Carolina primary ... Everyone that boos Judge Gorsuch, you’re not persuading me at all. As a matter of fact, if you can’t understand this is a qualified nominee, then you’re not listening.“
Very few people dispute that Gorsuch is a qualified nominee for the Supreme Court. The problem is that Republicans refused to even meet with Garland, another completely qualified judge, to fill the spot left by Antonin Scalia. Graham soldiered on in his defense, stating:
“If you don’t understand that elections matter, then you don’t understand America. If you think that only liberals can get their nominees and a conservative can’t, then you don’t understand America. And I don’t believe that the Constitution was written so that you get everything you want and I get nothing. That’s not the way the Constitution was written.”
The boos continued to rain down on Graham, and he left the crowd with this final thought about, once again, changing fundamental rules of our government so that only Republicans can get their way:
“So I’m going to vote for Neil Gorsuch. If [Democrats] try to filibuster him, they’ll be turning the country upside down and it will be a sad day and I will vote, if necessary, to the change the rules.”
You can watch Graham’s entire town hall below. This sequence occurs within the first ten minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtzDvmLrK-s&t=547s
Featured image via YouTube screengrab.
