January 9, 2020

Lindsey Graham was more than dismissive of Sen. Mike Lee's impassioned rejection of yesterday's congressional briefing on the Iran attack.

I think they're overreacting. Go debate all you want to. I'm going to debate you. Trust me, I'm going to let people know that at this moment in time, to play this game with a war powers act, which I think is unconstitutional, whether you mean to or not, you're empowering the enemy.

Lee reacted to the clip on Fox News, saying, "That is fundamentally antithetical to the Constitution. I love Lindsey Graham. He's a fantastic guy. We worked closely together on a lot of issues. He's dead wrong suggesting this is playing a game. Mr. Graham, the Constitution of the United States is not a game.

"Willie Geist, only in the age of Trump would actually reading the Constitution and believing Article I says what, only in Donald Trump's Washington would -- would a Republican senator call that empowering the enemy, Lindsey Graham's word about a fellow Republican, because he wanted to debate a strike, an air strike, wanted to debate intel," Joe Scarborough said.

"Lindsey called that 'empowering the enemy' and yet, it's Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump and the entire Republican party who has been castigating and slandering the men and women of the FBI, CIA, NSA, you name it, every intel agency across Washington, D.C., it's hard to say that this is Lindsey Graham's most shameful performance, but I would say that accusing Mike Lee of empowering the Iranians because you want to actually defend the Constitution of the United States, that's up there."

"Well, remember, this is the same day that Lindsey Graham said the president's speech was better than Reagan's 'tear down this wall' speech. That's where Lindsey Graham was yesterday in defending the president," Willie Geist said.

Remind me again: What is it, exactly, about Lindsey Graham that so many people love? Here's what Republican operative Steve Schmidt said in a recent Rolling Stone piece:

“People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now,” Schmidt says. “The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power — but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.”

I don't see what's so admirable about that.

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