Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said that the Biden administration’s policies have placed the United States in the “most dangerous times” since the late 1930s.
Speaking with syndicated radio talk show host John Catsimatidis Sunday morning, Graham talked about the anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot, and the circumstances that led to it.
“You had a bunch of people that tried to intimidate the Congress from doing its job,” Graham said of the rioters. He noted that he supports election reform, and that mail-in voting is “subject to fraud and abuse.” “Those who defiled the Capitol, [and] took the law into their own hands,” however, “I hope they get prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
Graham did not blame former President Donald Trump for the riot, saying that the president’s speech, which he gave shortly before the riot broke out, was a “political speech,” but he reiterated his point about the rioters, saying that January 6 was a “dark day for America,” and that he hopes the rioters are prosecuted.
Graham then pointed out that there were a number of unanswered questions, including pictures of an individual allegedly placing pipe bombs at various locations around Washington, D.C., on January 5, the night before Trump’s speech and the Capitol breach. “Who were these people?” Graham asked rhetorically. “Clearly, they weren’t inspired by [Trump’s] speech, ’cause he hadn’t given it yet. How could the Capitol, 20 years after 9/11 … be taken over by an unarmed mob? … Who’s responsible for protecting the Capitol? Is it the Speaker of the House? I hope she’s held accountable, whatever responsibility she may have,” Graham said.
“Forget about the reason it was taken over for a moment, how could that happen? And how exposed are we to a terrorist attack?” Graham added.
Graham then lambasted the speeches given by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in commemoration of the riot, saying that Biden’s speech was “awful” and a missed opportunity to unite the country in favor of partisan point-scoring.
“It was an effort on his part, and the vice president’s, to create a brazen political moment, to try to deflect from their failed presidency, it was an effort to push the passage of federal legislation to take over the states’ voting system, which has got nothing to do with January 6, so I was really disappointed in the tone of the president and the vice president — of the politicized January 6. The American people reject what happened on January 6, but come in November of 2022, they are going to reject the Democratic Party, because these folks running our country in the House and the Senate, and Biden, don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Rampant inflation, broken borders, turning Afghanistan back over to terrorists, being weak in the face of Iranian aggression, these are the most dangerous times since the late 30s, and I think the public is going to be voting in November of 2022 not based on what happened on January 6, but based on this failed Democratic radical agenda,” Graham said.
Graham went on to predict that former President Trump and the Republican Party at large would have success in 2022 and 2024 because the Democrats’ policies are not popular, and “do not represent America.” “We’re not a socialist country, we don’t want to pack the Supreme Court, we don’t want to abolish the Electoral College, we don’t want D.C. and Puerto Rico to become a state to change the balance of power in this country.”
“What happened on January 6 was bad, and people need to be punished, and they will be. But what Democrats are trying to do is tear up the Constitution. They are trying to change the balance of power in this country. … This is the most radical approach to our constitutional checks and balances in my lifetime, and maybe ever. There’s going to be a backlash in 2022, John, against this democratic radicalization,” Graham concluded.
Graham previously excoriated Biden over his January 6 speech. The Daily Wire reported:
“What brazen politicization of January 6 by President Biden,” Graham wrote in a tweet Thursday morning, while Biden was still speaking.
Graham expounded on his position in a Twitter thread later Thursday morning. “I still cannot believe a mob was able to take over the United States Capitol during such a pivotal moment – certifying a presidential election,” Graham wrote. “It would have been so easy for terrorists to bootstrap onto this protest and wreak even further destruction on the U.S. Capitol…”
Graham closed the thread by condemning Biden and Harris’s speeches as overt attempts to politicize the events of January 6 in order to buoy their floundering approval ratings and ram through a pair of Democratic-backed election overhaul bills. “President Biden and Vice President Harris’s speeches today were an effort to resurrect a failed presidency more than marking the anniversary of a dark day in American history,” Graham wrote.
“Their brazen attempts to use January 6 to support radical election reform and changing the rules of the Senate to accomplish this goal, will not succeed.”
“The Biden Presidency, one year after January 6, is in free fall not because of the attack on our Capitol, but because of failed policies and weak leadership,” Graham concluded.