Senator Lindsey Graham desperately wants Donald Trump to stop hurling lame insults at Kamala Harris.
In a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday, the South Carolina Republican urged the former president to see the error of his shallow ad hominem attacks.
“Every day that the candidates trade insults is a good day for her because it’s one less day that she has to defend the failures of the Biden-Harris administration,” Graham wrote. “Far more worthwhile for Mr. Trump is his record of success.The road to the White House runs through a vigorous policy debate, not an exchange of barbs.”
He then laid out his own arguments he would use in a debate, holding up praise for Trump’s policies next to Graham’s own dull characterization of Harris’s.
Graham spent a significant portion of his word count bashing Harris, using a pared down version of the Trump campaign’s talking points such as blaming her administration’s federal spending for booming inflation, although it’s not entirely clear that those two things are connected.
Graham called immigration the “cornerstone of her portfolio” and criticized Harris for her too-little-too-late support for an aggressive bipartisan border bill—ignoring the fact that Trump had ordered congressional Republicans to kill the measure.
Graham also criticized Harris for doubling back on hydrofracking, and being the “last person in the room” with President Joe Biden before he put the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan into action.
Trump also has been attacking Harris for these issues, but it’s been buried in the torrent of other meaningless comments about bacon and windmills, false claims that Harris had been the leader of the “defund the police” movement, and gratuitous self-praise for being a “great speaker.” And all of that was just in one day alone.
While Trump’s avid fans may enjoy his ridiculous comments, Graham seemed not so impressed.
To be sure, he also spent inches praising Trump, painting him as the strongman on the international stage, though recent descriptions show he was more like a kid whose lunch got taken for nothing. But laced into Graham’s argument was a strong criticism that Trump needs to get serious if he actually wants to actually win a debate—not just triumph by default.
Will Trump take any of this to heart? Outlook not so good. Earlier this month, Graham remarked that Trump “the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.” Trump responded with a harsh dismissal of his longtime ally, saying, “Look, I like Lindsey. I don’t care what he says, okay?”
Perhaps Lindsey is hopeful that while Trump doesn’t listen to him, maybe he does read the Times? Not likely? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
The post Lindsey Graham Is Begging Trump to Shut up About Harris appeared first on New Republic.
