Lindsey Graham Dead at 71

[Jersey Girl]

That's pretty sad.

Yes, but at least he died before he could do more damage, so thank goodness for small favors.

If he suffered in the end, maybe that was the universe telling him he screwed up as a human. He was a piece of crap, after all. Him suffering for his asshole behavior is a happy thought, but I don't believe it. He died like many humans die, and it's impossible for me to muster any sympathy for someone so destructive to our country. If he were a decent person, I'd likely feel differently.

(Not) sorry if that bothers you. He was a terrible person and our country is better off without him.

It doesn't bother me at all that you think that.

[Kishkumen]

RIP Lindsey Graham

On July 12, preliminary findings from the D.C. medical examiner stated Graham died from an aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease

His dad died a few years younger.

I fervently hope that no other Republican replacement candidate will have a better chance of winning than Graham did.

I fervently hope for a blue wave that washes out the filthy MAGA garbage.

[Jersey Girl]

RIP Lindsey Graham

On July 12, preliminary findings from the D.C. medical examiner stated Graham died from an aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease

His dad died a few years younger.

I think I read his Dad was 68 when he passed from cardiac arrest. Makes me think genetic predisposition but here's the thing. Lindsey would have had stellar health care benefits and there's all sorts of preventatives for arteriosclerosis. He may have been one of those folks who are running all the time and don't really take care of themselves. But who knows. We can't know. And even if someone tells us, we can't trust that either.

Harry Potter: “This is mental.”
Hermione Granger: “Completely mental.”
Ron Weasley: “The world's mental.”

[Gunnar]

I fervently hope that no other Republican replacement candidate will have a better chance of winning than Graham did.

I fervently hope for a blue wave that washes out the filthy MAGA garbage.

So do I! He is so terrified that this might happen in the next mid-term election that he thinks passing and signing into law his so-called "Save America Act" before the election is such an urgent emergency that he refuses to sign any other law until that act reaches his desk. He is convinced that law can be legally used by Conservative Republicans to purge voters they don't like from the election rolls and overturn elections results not in their favor.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The difference between the two Presidents and their comments about Lindsey Graham couldn’t be any more different:

Jill and I were shocked by the sudden passing of Lindsey Graham.

We served together in the Senate for many years. We had our disagreements, but we were always able to find common ground and work together on behalf of the American people.

Lindsey loved the Senate and devoted his life to serving South Carolina and our nation.

Our prayers are with his family and all who loved him.

VS

Well, I don't feel great. He was a great guy, and he was a friend. He would call me all the time. He would just -- I'd say, stop calling me, Lindsey. He was just -- he was amazing. You know, he just didn't stop and he would be -- he was a worker. He was a total workaholic politician. Now, some people don't call that work.
Donald Trump 00:00:33-00:00:53 (21 sec)
Some people call that a lot of talking. But everybody loved him. Uh, he was good on the other side. If I had -- if I had Democrat problems, he could solve them. He was a man of all different abilities, actually. And -- and he was a nice man. He was a great guy. He loved -- loved playing golf, loved being outside.
Donald Trump 00:00:53-00:01:18 (25 sec)
He'd play golf with people and you just liked him. It wasn't that he was a great striker of the ball. He wasn't -- he wasn't exactly a perfect -- he wasn't Jack Nicklaus, he was not Tiger, but he was -- he loved it and he got -- he had fun. You know, he was a man who had a lot of fun. He had fun with politics, but he was really good at it. And then when he got angry, like he did in the case of Brett Kavanaugh, it was so impactful.
Donald Trump 00:01:18-00:01:44 (26 sec)
I think it saved the -- I think it saved the, uh, Brett becoming a justice. You know, it was just a moment in time that the Democrats got so sick and so angry and so crazy, and they were going to do something very bad. And Lindsey went on his tirade, and it was much more than a tirade, but it was -- I think it was one of the great 10 moments of Congress, if you want to know the truth.
Donald Trump 00:01:44-00:02:05 (21 sec)
I said, that was one of the 10 greatest moments in Congress, and I think you wouldn't find ten other cases where -- where somebody did what he was able to do there. And he saved Brett from, you know, a very, very unfair decision, or they would have had to -- they would have turned a man down who was so qualified and such a good man.
Donald Trump 00:02:05-00:02:13 (8 sec)
So, you know, and I do -- I do think it was one of the top 10 in Congress. You know, like they have the top 10 in sports, this was the top 10 in politics.
Lawrence Jones 00:02:13-00:02:14 (1 sec)
That's right.
Donald Trump 00:02:14-00:02:44 (30 sec)
And -- but he was just a good man and, you know, he called me. He came back from Ukraine and he called me and -- which didn't surprise me at all. And he said, I'm back and told me a couple of things. He was very strong on fighting for the SAVE America Act. And I'm not sure if he was at the beginning, but he really became the primary advocate for it. And I think he would have felt the same way about terminating the filibuster, which was so important.
Donald Trump 00:02:44-00:03:07 (23 sec)
I mean, it's so important. The Republicans have to do it it's so insane. Otherwise, we're going to have a shutdown in September, and we have a debt ceiling problem coming in two years. And if you terminate the filibuster, everything goes away, and we do anything we want. We pass everything we want, and the Democrats are going to do it. And he started to see that, because he was against because everyone was sort of against.

Donald Trump 00:03:07-00:03:27 (20 sec)
Not everybody, 20 percent were against. He was one and now he was starting to say, terminate the filibuster, otherwise, we're going to have, you know, these continued, ridiculous, crazy, Trump-deranged -- they're Trump deranged. These people suffer from a very fine disease known as Trump derangement syndrome, and he was seeing that.
Donald Trump 00:03:27-00:03:28 ( sec)
And --
Lawrence Jones 00:03:28-00:03:29 (2 sec)
Mr. President, did you notice any --
Donald Trump 00:03:29-00:03:45 (16 sec)
-- he was -- he really come a long way on the -- on the terminating the filibuster, which is the single smartest thing we could do. Because then you'd get everything. You know, that's -- that's the bigger -- that's bigger. But even if we took the small loaf and the small loaf is the SAVE America Act, and it's very simple.
Donald Trump 00:03:45-00:03:57 (12 sec)
It's voter ID, it's proof of citizenship, and it's no voter -- it's the -- the ballot. Look what happened to the kid in California. They sent a million ballots; nobody know where they came from.
Lawrence Jones 00:03:57-00:03:57 (1 sec)
Yeah.
Donald Trump 00:03:57-00:04:13 (16 sec)
So it's, you know, you don't do mail-in ballots unless you're in the military, you're in deployment, you're in the military. You don't do them if somebody's sick, if somebody's disabled, or if you go on vacation, you know, you get a pass. We make it nice and easy.
Lawrence Jones 00:04:13-00:04:16 (2 sec)
Mr. President, did you notice any -- did you notice anything different?
Donald Trump 00:04:16-00:04:32 (16 sec)
But they find millions and millions of ballots. In California, they find millions and millions of ballots. It's impossible. Spencer Pratt came up to my office. He said he thought he won. I said, why didn't you complain? He didn't know who to complain to. But what they did to that guy was unbelievable. He's a nice guy.
Donald Trump 00:04:32-00:04:40 (8 sec)
He works so hard. And they found millions of ballots, you know, and they took the election away from him. They almost did it to Steve Hilton. I complained.

Lawrence Jones 00:04:40-00:04:40 ( sec)
Yeah.
Donald Trump 00:04:40-00:04:57 (17 sec)
I got the US attorneys involved and the FBI. And as soon as -- because he was -- you know, they were putting out reports, Steve Hilton is starting to fade. He's running, as you know, for governor of California. And they said, Steve Hilton -- I said, here we go, they're going to find ballots. And they said he was starting to fade.
Donald Trump 00:04:57-00:05:18 (21 sec)
He wasn't fading, hge was the opposite. And I put the US attorney involved. They said, we'll know in two weeks. After I -- can you imagine? This is the week after the election, they're saying he started to fade. And then I got the US attorney involved, and they didn't know in two weeks. They let it be known an hour later that Steve Hilton had -- Steve Hilton [Inaudible] that he's going to be in the runoff.
Lawrence Jones 00:05:18-00:05:22 (4 sec)
So Mr. President, real quickly, did you notice anything different from Lindsey --
Donald Trump 00:05:22-00:05:38 (16 sec)
So these elections are very dishonest and you can't have a country unless you have really honest elections. And when people don't want to have voter ID, when people don't want to have proof of citizenship, it's only for one reason, because they want to cheat and they're very good at it.
Griff Jenkins 00:05:38-00:05:59 (21 sec)
And, Mr. President, obviously, Senator Lindsey Graham was a co-sponsor of the SAVE America Act. Let me ask you, though, we were talking and you were just talking about that Kavanaugh moment being a top 10 moment, and I would agree, as we were all watching on that day in 2018 and knew -- we knew we were witnessing history.
Griff Jenkins 00:05:59-00:06:17 (18 sec)
But -- but I wonder whether or not that was a significant, pivotal moment in your friendship and the development of your close bond with him, when you saw him standing and fighting, since no other person was, that delivered, ultimately, Justice Kavanaugh? Was that in a key moment?
Donald Trump 00:06:17-00:06:34 (17 sec)
No, it was just a sign of respect. I knew Lindsay, by that time -- don't forget, Lindsay was one of -- there were a total, actually, of 18 people that -- they always say 16 or 17, but there were actually 18 people running for president. A couple had dropped out very early, and he -- he was one of them, one of them running.
Donald Trump 00:06:34-00:06:52 (18 sec)
And he was totally against me. I mean, he was fighting me. He sort of used me as the example because I was leading in the polls by a lot. And he said, I'll get you in South Carolina. I'm going to get you in South Carolina. That didn't work out too well. I joke about it. You know, it was like -- it was amazing, actually.
Donald Trump 00:06:52-00:07:12 (20 sec)
The whole thing was amazing. Hey, the whole career was amazing, but Lindsay was a big part of it because once that ended, he left the race. And once that ended, I became really good friends with him. Now, he had one bad moment and that was, you know, in the January 6th thing when he stood up, all right, now I've had it, that's it, I can't do it anymore.

I won’t clean up the transcript because no one will read it, anyway. But if you skim through it the level of sheer idgaf about Lindsey Graham is evident. It’s obvious the world misses the kind of leadership found in Joe Biden.

[Doctor Steuss]

To piggy back on former President Biden's message, here is what former VP Harris said:

I am saddened to learn of the passing of my former colleague, Senator Lindsey Graham. He was full of wit, energy, and charm, and he cared deeply about the Senate and the people of South Carolina. Doug and I are sending our thoughts and our prayers to his friends and loved ones.

I think it also helps stand in stark contrast against Graham himself, once he embraced Trump. The biggest thing Trump has shown Republicans in general and people like Graham more specifically, is that decorum doesn't matter. Acting like a decent human being, and maintaining the dignity of the office you hold, isn't necessary for maintaining power post-Trump, and Graham had no problem embracing that new freedom.

Trump liberated him and others to wallow in their most base behaviors, and abandon any pretense of decency, ethics, morals, or basic dignity. You can be a crass garbage human being, that emulates a literary caricature of an anti-Christian villain, and still be beloved by the majority of Republicans. Graham maintained that basic dignity and decency in his pursuit of power when he thought it was necessary, but post-Trump showed us that Graham (and most Republican politicians) only did it because he thought it was necessary... not because of who he was as a person.