Once upon a time, Lindsey Graham was occasionally principled and shows signs of intelligent thought. Those days are gone, as we see when CNN's New Day panel openly mocks him for his pathetic defense of Trump's Ukraine bribery. But John Avlon really nailed it.

“This is the descent of man being acted out by Lindsey Graham. A few weeks ago, it was ‘If there is any objective evidence of quid pro quo, I’d be real concerned.’ Now we have, basically, consensus evidence of quid pro quo, and instead, Lindsey Graham is saying 'I’m not going to read the transcripts,' a literal know-nothing position as opposed to confronting the facts," Avlon said.

"What I love about this is it’s the perfect encapsulation of what a lot of the last line of Donald Trump’s defense is. Which is: 'He’s incompetent, he’s a large malevolent child, you can’t hold him to the same standards as other humans, let alone presidents, so there’s no way they could have executed this. Stop beating up on the baby!' This is the argument one of his staunchest defenders in the Senate is making. And it’s nuts.”

Yes, it is.