I knew things were different the morning after Barack Obama announced that the Navy SEALs had hunted down Osama bin Laden. In my coastal South Carolina neighborhood, in a county where the American flag flies proudly from many front porches, an area that years later would vote for Donald Trump twice by wide margins, the celebration was subdued. Although it felt more like a mourning than a celebration, my neighbors weren’t upset that Laden was dead, just that it was a Democrat who had killed him.
It wasn’t like the joy that had erupted spontaneously outside the White House even before Obama took the podium. It was not a display of the kind of American pride long anticipated if bin Laden had been captured by the Bush administration. It didn’t amount to much, except for rationalizations that the achievement belonged to George W. Bush, who had been out of office for more than two years, or to the SEAL who pulled the trigger, as long as credit went to everyone and everyone but obama.
Not even the successful end to a 10-year manhunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, the man responsible for killing thousands of Americans and the spark that lit the fuse for two decades. – long wars that cost us trillions in treasure and even more in blood and a sense of security – could bring us together.
When people hate their political opponents more than they love themselves, there is no compromise, no feat that can bridge the gap. It’s what I saw in 2011 after the killing of Bin Laden and what I’ve seen since Donald Trump was impeached for the second time. No one embodies this change more than Lindsey Graham, the senior United States senator from South Carolina.
There was a time when Graham was considered a statesman, a man willing to reach across the aisle if it was in the best interest of the country. Not more. After a special counsel revealed a damning indictment about Trump, including his reckless disregard for the nation’s most sensitive security secrets, including nuclear weapons and our vulnerability to attack, Graham stopped short of warning his supporters to let the process developed and only demanded. that it is fair and transparent. Instead, he joined a growing crowd of conspiracy theorists and fabulists trying to convince the country that Trump is the real victim.
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His descent into a far-right caricature of the man I once voted for hit a new low over the weekend on ABC News. He took on the cloak of performative self-righteousness to claim that he spoke for all Republicans while falsely claiming that Trump was being treated unfairly by the justice system. He raised his voice in anger as spit escaped from his mouth.
“Most Republicans believe we live in a country where Hillary Clinton did very similar things and nothing happened to her.” Graham said he later tweeted.
Most Republicans believe the falsehood is because men like Graham have repeatedly lied to them or refused to disabuse them of misinformation.
The facts are this: Trump was treated differently by the justice system because most others would have been arrested long before Trump ended up in a Florida courtroom pleading not guilty. The Justice Department and others worked with Trump for two years to get him to return extremely sensitive documents that did not belong to him. They basically begged him, hoping to avoid where we ended up.
Not only did he repeatedly refuse, he repeatedly lied to the DOJ and his own lawyers and advisors. He hid documents even after the FBI searched his home and encouraged others to build a stone wall. He shared sensitive information with those who should not have seen it.
It bears repeating that Trump had taken secrets. This is not a simple dispute over documents or distraction, which are among the ridiculous excuses Trump supporters present.
Trump was given a thousand and one chances to avoid impeachment and arrest, but refused at every turn. That’s not in the same universe as what Clinton, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Colin Powell, James Comey and other high-level officials who have faced questions about their handling of classified information did.
Graham knows it.
Graham also knows that the fastest way to get conservatives to forget about police brutality and shootings is to shout “And Chicago?!”
And he knows the easiest way to mislead tens of millions of Americans about why Trump is facing criminal charges is to shout “And Hillary?!”
Gone are the days when a threat to one’s own nation would unite us, like how Democrats rallied around a Republican president after the 9/11 attacks and pushed his approval into record territory. These days, we have a party so committed to keeping or regaining power that it makes excuses for the men who put all our lives at risk. Not even a violent attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021 in the heart of our democracy was enough to convince them to change course.
South Carolina’s own Lindsey Graham is guiding us as we move down a dark and dangerous path.
