Free Republic

Donald Trump should apologize for pushing the “unseemly” birther conspiracy regarding where President Barack Obama was born, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham indicated Tuesday. Trump last week explicitly acknowledged that Obama was born in the U.S., though he went on to blame Hillary Clinton for igniting the so-called “birther” controversy despite no evidence and refused to apologize for questioning the validity of the country's first black president. “I would apologize,” Graham, a frequent and colorful Trump critic, told Bloomberg Politics on Tuesday. “I think the whole movement was unseemly. I had a lot of distaste for it. No factual basis....

Long before Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) became a prominent NeverTurmper, he appears to have been a favorite Republican among the Clinton camp. According to emails obtained by Citizens United through a Freedom of Information Act request and first given to LifeZette, Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band referred to Graham as the “bff” of longtime Hillary Clinton confidante Huma Abedin in November 2009.

A lot of people aren’t happy that some Republicans have broken their pledge to the GOP. One of those people is RNC head Reince Priebus. Reince is warning those who don’t support Donald Trump they’ll need to watch their backs in the future. Meaning, we’re not going to help you when your election rolls around if you turn your back on us now. Makes sense – for the most part. From Newsmax: Republican National Committee head Reince Priebus says there may be “consequences” in the future for GOP presidential primary candidates who don’t stick with their pledge to support the...

WASHINGTON — South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said he is pleased Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is holding up against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. “Trump is getting better,” Graham told reporters Tuesday pointing to the recent polling. “You can see a more disciplined message. If he can hold it together for another 8 weeks.” Graham, who ran against Trump in the primary and doubted that the New York billionaire could beat Clinton, appeared impressed that Trump could withstand the amount of political attacks he had taken so far. “He’s had massive political body blows that would knock anybody...

Sen. Lindsey Graham is worried Donald Trump's floundering presidential campaign will cost the Senate Republicans their majority. "People are getting pretty nervous about our candidates because he's in a death spiral here and nobody knows where the bottom is at," the South Carolina Republican told the New York Times. The Republican presidential nominee overhauled his campaign this week following a string of controversial comments that angered many in the party. But it is unclear if that will help Trump avoid the fall he's seen in recent national and state polls. Specifically, Republicans worry that Trump's struggles in the swing states...

Sen. Lindsey Graham has predicted a massive loss for Donald Trump in November, saying the GOP presidential nominee has alienated voters to the point of no return. “Reality is reality,” the South Carolina Republican said Tuesday on WABC Radio’s Imus in the Morning, BuzzFeed first reported. “Mitt Romney got 27% of the Hispanic vote. By 2050, a majority of the country will be African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and others, and we’re losing demographically. We’ve gone from 44% with Bush to 27% with Romney, and I don’t think Donald Trump’s gonna get 20%,” Mr. Graham said. “The problems we’ve had with young...

The most "inefficient" candidate? Why, Lindsey Graham, of course. I know, I know. Did ANYONE vote for Lindsey Graham? Well, 5,623 souls to be exact, or enough to fill up a Columbia 1-AA football stadium. Since Graham paid a total of $5,700,248 for all those votes, or $1,013.74 per vote, he wins the prize for electoral waste. . . In fairness to Graham and others who exited the race early, generally those who invested a ton of money in the early primaries only to fail and drop out were by far the least efficient candidates. For example, Jeb Bush spent...

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham urged Donald Trump to clarify his position on defending European allies after a New York Times article quoted the GOP presidential nominee as not fully supportive of the NATO alliance treaty. “Statements like these make the world more dangerous and the United States less safe,” Graham, R-S.C., said this morning. “I can only imagine how our allies in NATO, particularly the Balkan states must feel after reading these comments from Mr. Trump,” Graham said. “I’m 100 percent certain how Russian President Putin feels – he’s a very happy man.” Trump, in a New York Times interview...

During a time when the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, should be working to bring the party together and prepare for the primary battle against Hillary Clinton, he continues to deepen the divide between Republicans and Americans alike. Trump’s recent attack on U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel because of his Mexican-American background prompted Sen. Lindsey Graham to round up the Republicans who have previously endorsed Donald Trump, and persuade them to take it all back. Graham claimed that Trump’s racist remarks were “the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy.” “If anybody was looking for an off-ramp,...

The Gang of Eight is back, and this time its bipartisan members are vowing their widely contested immigration reform proposals – including one bearing the name of amnesty that had Sen. Marco Rubio rushing to distance himself from while he campaigned for presidetn – will have a much clearer path to passage. Speaker Paul Ryan is reportedly more open to pushing forward immigration reform than was John Boehner, former speaker,

“If somebody in Washington is holding their breath, waiting to give their endorsement on an apology, they’re going to be waiting a long time,” he said. “There are so many people in this country who are just sick and tired of our elected officials being apologetic for everything.” When Trump spoke to the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference last month, it sparked hope among Washington Republicans of a long-awaited pivot to the general election and a more presidential demeanor. Those hopes, however, were dashed by Trump’s assertion last week that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over civil...

On May 23rd, we here at Mediaite ran this headline: Lindsey Graham Caves, Quietly Tells Fellow Republicans to Get Behind Trump 14 days later, Graham has not only done a complete 180, but he is telling other Republicans to un-endorse Donald Trump. Yes, just so we’re clear, Graham went from “hell no” on Trump to “eh maybe” on Trump to “okay let’s do this” on Trump to “ABANDON THIS SINKING SHIP WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND DONORS FIRST.” Graham spoke to The New York Times and made it clear he’s telling Republicans to get out while they still can: Senator Lindsey...

If ever there were a moment for Republicans to jump off the Trump train, now would be as good of a time, according to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Graham wants fellow Republicans who have endorsed Donald Trump to take it all back in the wake of his repeated claims that Judge Gonzalo Curiel's heritage make him unfit to preside over lawsuits against him....

The following is a list of prominent Republicans who say they’re not planning to attend the Republican National Convention -- based on responses from their offices and previously published reports: Former President George W. Bush Former President George H.W. Bush 2008 Republican presidential nominee and Arizona Sen. John McCain 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney 2016 presidential candidate and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval Wyoming Gov. Matthew Mead South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson Kansas Sen....

Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Donald Trump's fiercest critics, is now calling on Republicans to support their presumptive nominee. Graham urged GOP donors at a private fundraiser Saturday in Florida to unite behind Trump's campaign and stressed the importance of keeping likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton from the White House. The fundraiser was hosted by former U.S. Ambassador to Portugal Al Hoffman, a former Republican National Committee finance chairman who also co-chaired Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential bid. "He did say that we need to get behind him," Teresa Dailey, a prominent Florida Republican fundraiser who attended the private event,...

They’re coming for your home. Right now. I suggest you save it. I can guide you, but you must do exactly as I say. Except, this isn’t The Matrix. You’re no actor, like Keanu Reeves, playing a distraught programmer-hacker named “Neo.” Nor am I an actor, like Laurence Fishburne, playing your guide “Morpheus.” This is real life, baby. Your home or apartment—and the neighborhood in which you live—is under siege. “Agents”—sans black glasses and black business suits—who work for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have written a new regulation called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) that...

Ted Cruz and his allies are preparing for the coming National GOP Convention. According to NBC News, Cruz who recently attended a GOP convention in Texas told his supporters that the days ahead will be "challenging" for the Republican Party. He, however, expressed hope that those who remain loyal to him and the party "will be the remnant, will be the core of pulling this country back from the abyss." Aside from this pronouncement, [he] has remained mum about whether he will throw his support for presumptive nominee Donald Trump. According to the NBC report, the support of Cruz and...

The reports of the Bush dynasty’s collapse are greatly exaggerated; but now that Jeb’s disastrous campaign has finally reached its finale, it admittedly does feel like a distinct era of Republican Party politics is leaving the stage with him. (SNIP) The stump speech was for Rush Limbaugh; the budget was for the Chamber of Commerce. It worked for Poppy in ’88, and Dubya pulled it off twice. (SNIP) A sizable chunk of rank-and-file Republicans are wise to the bait and switch now; pandering to the Birchite wing of the Republican Party with dog-whistles won’t cut it. If you want to...

Sen. Lindsey Graham paused for five full seconds and stumbled over his words pondering the question: When is the last time he split with fellow Republican Sen. John McCain on a major issue? “I don’t know, let me think about it,” Graham (S.C.) finally said of his closest Senate friend. “There have been several. I just can’t recall right now, right off the top of my head.” Yet that’s what has happened in the wake of Donald Trump’s ascendancy to presumptive Republican nominee for president. In the Republican civil war over Trump, this is perhaps the most glaring example of...

Trump had courted the hawkish Graham, a leading voice in the GOP on defense issues, for his input on national security policy, the senator said. But Trump turned on the charm for Graham, who called the conversation “very cordial [and] funny.” “He’s got a great sense of humor. He’s from New York, he obviously can take a punch,” Graham told reporters. “I wished him well and that’s where we are.”

South Carolina senator and former Republican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham has been a sharp and frequent critic of his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, but on Wednesday he changed his tune slightly. While saying that he still cannot support Trump for president, Graham however said that he sees some good ideas in Trump’s proposals and believes the former reality television star could win the White House in November. But it won’t happen unless he changes the way he presents himself to the public, Graham added, because “crazy loses to crooked.”

(Trump) used the term "lightweight" to describe Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., once in the presidential race, and suggested former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another former rival, was still licking his wounds from the vicious campaign. The party's 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, Trump said, "blew the election" that year and never even thanked Trump for his work on Romney's behalf. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 nominee, said it would take a lot for him to ever stand on stage next to Trump, even though McCain has agreed to support the party's nominee.

DONALD J. TRUMP RESPONSE TO LINDSEY GRAHAM "I fully understand why Lindsey Graham cannot support me. If I got beaten as badly as I beat him, and all the other candidates he endorsed, I would not be able to give my support either. Every time I see Lindsey Graham spew hate during interviews I ask why the media never questions how I single-handedly destroyed his hapless run for President. As a candidate who did not receive 1% in his own state - compared to my victory at nearly 40% with many others in the race - he has zero credibility....

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said on Friday that he will not support Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, but that he also refuses to support Hillary Clinton. "As for me, I absolutely will not support Hillary Clinton for President. She represents the third term of Barack Obama, and our nation cannot afford to continue those failed policies at home or abroad," he said in a Friday afternoon statement. "I also cannot in good conscience support Donald Trump because I do not believe he is a reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as...

Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he would consider making Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) his running mate. “I respect Ted,” he told host Bill O’Reilly on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor." "He was a very strong competitor. He really competed hard and tough." “He’s certainly a capable guy,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee added. "It’s something we can think about.” Trump defeated Cruz in Tuesday’s Indiana GOP presidential primary, making him the presumptive nominee. Cruz suspended his Oval Office bid shortly afterward, saying that his results in the Hoosier State “foreclose” his path to the Republican presidential nomination. Trump on...

Donald Trump's victory in Indiana came down quick as a guillotine—but even before the election results rolled in, the GOP faithful were jumping ship. Former John McCain aide Mark Salter declared his allegiance to Hillary Clinton earlier today. the GOP is going to nominate for President a guy who reads the National Enquirer and thinks it's on the level. I'm with her. — Mark Salter (@MarkSalter55) May 3, 2016 RedState blogger Ben Howe, who's promised to phone bank for Clinton if Trump gets the nomination, followed suit. #ImWithHer — Ben Howe (@BenHowe) May 3, 2016 Once it became clear that...

Indianapolis (CNN)South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is predicting "another 9/11" if Donald Trump is elected president. In an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation" Graham said the Republican Party is in the midst of a "civil war" and called Trump's foreign policy positions dangerous. He pointed to former House Speaker John Boehner's comments about his friendly relationship with Trump, and Boehner's dismissal of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump's chief Republican presidential rival, as "Lucifer in the flesh."

In 1994, Lindsey Graham, then a 39-year-old South Carolina legislator, ran for Congress in a district that he said had not elected a Republican since Union guns made it do so during Reconstruction. He promised that in Washington he would be "one less vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up." He was elected to the Senate in 2002 and soon almost certainly will join the Republican presidential scramble, enlivening it with his quick intelligence, policy fluency, mordant wit and provocative agenda. He has the normal senatorial tendency to see a president in the mirror and an...

Throughout the Republican Party, from New Hampshire to Florida to California, many leaders, operatives, donors and activists arrived this week at the conclusion they had been hoping to thwart or at least delay: Donald Trump will be their presidential nominee. An aura of inevitability is now forming around the controversial mogul. Trump smothered his opponents in six straight primaries in the Northeast and vacuumed up more delegates than even the most generous predictions foresaw. He is gaining high-profile ­endorsements by the day — a legendary Indiana basketball coach Wednesday, two House committee chairmen Thursday. And his ­rivals, Sen. Ted Cruz...

Sen. Lindsey Graham tore into Donald Trump’s speech on foreign policy, calling it “unnerving,” “pathetic” and “scary.” The South Carolina Republican former presidential candidate told WABC Radio on Wednesday that the speech was “nonsensical” and showed that Trump “has no understanding of the world and the role we play.” “This speech was unnerving. It was pathetic in its content, and it was scary in terms of its construct. If you had any doubt that Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief, this speech should’ve removed it,” Graham said. “It took every problem and fear I have with...

CNBC: Cruz will make major announcement at 4PM

A Senate bill that would allow families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks to sue the Saudi government has achieved a rare Washington distinction, by uniting the Obama administration and some of its fiercest GOP critics. President Barack Obama and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are rallying to kill the bipartisan plan that would make it possible for American citizens to sue foreign governments believed to be linked to terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., said the plan should be reviewed through regular order before decisions are made about advancing the measure. White House Press...

“Well, I think it would be a bad idea to put little girls in a bathroom with grown men,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told CNN on Thursday. But the senator also made it clear that the issue is not one of major national importance, as far as he is concerned: “All I can say is that the only bathroom I can control is in my office, and you can use the bathroom in my office without bringing your birth certificate.” …

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on campaign 2016 (all times Eastern): 8:15 a.m. Donald Trump says he believes transgender people should be able to use whichever bathroom they choose. Speaking at a town hall event on NBC's "Today" Thursday, Trump said North Carolina's so-called "bathroom law," which directs transgender people to use the bathroom that matches the gender on their birth certificates, has caused unnecessary strife.

If you think the Trump campaign is full of amateurs, you are correct. Donald Trump’s social media director Dan Scavino, eager to prove that his boss was an expert on tax reform, posted a link to an appearance Trump made in 1991 before the House Budget Committee: There’s one problem: in his testimony, not only did Trump bash Ronald Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986, calling it a catastrophe and saying income taxes should be raised to increase investment in real estate, but Trump actually compared the United States to the Soviet Union. Why, you’d almost think Trump is a...

On April 13, ABC’s World News Tonight correspondent Tom Llamas devoted most of that night’s report to chilling death threats against the Colorado state Republican party chairman, angered at how Donald Trump failed to win any delegates at the weekend party convention. Besides that one report, and two minor mentions (one on ABC’s Good Morning America and on Thursday’s CBS Evening News), that’s all the broadcast news attention given to reports of actual death threats in this increasingly nasty presidential race: 110 seconds in total, not a moment of which was on NBC. But since the Colorado convention through Thursday...

Sen. Lindsey Graham has placed a hold on legislation that would open the door for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to sue Saudi Arabia. Graham (R-S.C.), who is a co-sponsor of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, put the hold on his own bill over concerns that new changes could expose the U.S. to legal attacks.

"Reince Priebus' former loyalists say they have reluctantly concluded that forces at the RNC will stop at virtually nothing to keep the door open to the nomination of Ohio Gov. John Kasich at the July convention – or, as some skeptics fear, some “white knight” who moderates claim will have broader voter appeal this fall than either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, the two top-delegate winners, have shown in most polls so far."

Washington Post (and others) sitting on video. We've indy confirm video looks bad, showing multiple hotel encounters According to person who worked for Rubio campaign. Cruz video shows *multiple* hotel encounters with non-spouse females. Just entry & exits

The Republican National Committee is expected to debate a proposal next week that would dramatically shift the balance of power at this summer’s convention — and impose a new rulebook for selecting the party's nominee. The proposal, which will top the agenda during a meeting of the Rules panel at the RNC’s annual spring meeting in Hollywood Beach, Fla., would fundamentally alter how the convention is conducted, further empowering the delegates to determine the course of the proceedings. It amounts to not just a changing of the rules but of the rulebook itself, with far-reaching implications, potentially impacting whether party...

Senator Lindsay Graham opened the evidence session of the Senate Appropriations Committee which hosted U2 singer Bono yesterday by telling the room that you don’t win wars against terrorists by killing them, or “dropping bombs on their head” but rather, by spending U.S. tax payer cash attempting to keep migrants un-radicalised. He said that non governmental organisations and charities in the Middle East and North Africa “can do just as much good as any battalion of soldiers”.

Ted Cruz's and Marco Rubio's supporters have teamed up in Arkansas to pack the state delegation with individuals who'll turn against Donald Trump in a contested convention. Since Rubio ended his presidential bid March 15, his network of party insiders has lined up behind Cruz to win delegates who'd vote for the Texas senator once they're no longer bound to Trump in a floor fight. Trump won Arkansas' GOP primary March 1 with 32.8 percent of the vote compared to Cruz's 30.5 percent and Rubio's 24.9 percent. But Cruz's canny operatives, with Rubio riding shotgun, is likely to thwart Trump...

On March 1, the Colorado Republican party prepared for 60,000 voters to arrive at nearly 3,000 precinct-caucus sites across the state. Those voters would select men and women to attend the party’s county assemblies and congressional district conventions, in the first step of a multi-part process that determined 34 of Colorado’s 37 delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. To hear Donald Trump and his fans tell it, those tens of thousands of Republicans never arrived, never made their choices, and never had the chance to play a role in selecting the party’s delegates. Matt Drudge, the populist Right’s...

Donald Trump has repeatedly labeled his political opponents liars. He dubbed Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) Lyin' Ted when it became clear that Cruz was a serious rival for his nomination; he called Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) an "even bigger liar" than Cruz. He dubbed Dr. Ben Carson a "pathological liar" and said former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's lies were almost as bad as Cruz's. Trump has termed virtually every mildly adversarial media member a liar, too. But there's only one truly massive liar in this race: Donald Trump. When Politico attempted to measure how many lies Trump told over the...

Donald Trump is right: The system is rigged. It’s rigged in favor of front-runners. That’s why Trump, who is leading the Republican nominating contest, has a larger percentage of delegates (46 percent) than of votes (37 percent). Unsurprisingly, Trump never mentions when the rules have helped him. He much prefers to whine and peddle conspiracy theories when they don’t. Trump’s latest tantrum is over Colorado, where Ted Cruz just swept all 34 of the state’s available delegates. Trump is calling the results “totally unfair” and on Twitter he asked: “How is it possible that the people of the great State...

You see, contrary to the impression that many people have been left with over the past couple of days, Colorado’s traditional caucus-night poll had never been a binding, primary-like election. That’s not how it worked. It was a simple straw-poll — nothing more, nothing less. It wasn’t the process used to distribute delegates to the candidates. The nomination procedure in this state has been driven by the election of representatives for over a hundred years (except for from 1992 to 2002). It starts with grassroots caucus attendees from local precincts voting on congressional-district delegates (their neighbors) to represent them, and...

Donald Trump played up his plans to tax companies that move jobs out of the United States as he tried to appeal to blue collar workers in a New York rally Sunday. Speaking for about an hour Sunday in Rochester, N.Y., Trump recited statistics about the area's loss of manufacturing jobs and economic hardship in recent years. He reiterated his desire to tax goods sold by companies once based in the United States that moved away to find cheaper labor. The plan has been widely panned by economic experts. But the Rochester crowd ate it up. "I'm the only one...

Despite what you may have heard or read, Donald Trump has never filed for bankruptcy. His companies have, four times, but Donald Trump never has.  The purpose of corporations is for investors to put a limited amount of capital at risk in exchange for the opportunity to earn money in any one of a myriad of legal ways. Investor use the corporate structure to ensure that if their bets go south, the most they can lose is the capital they invested in the first place. Corporate bankruptcy laws can give a company an opportunity to restructure its business in a...

During an interview with CBS News online Friday about the 2016 presidential race, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appealed for help locating a jacket that he left on a plane. The former GOP presidential candidate said he left his Ralph Lauren jacket on a plane and he urged whoever has it to contact him immediately. Following an extensive discussion of his support for Ted Cruz and the shortcomings of Donald Trump's foreign policy views, Graham turned to the camera. "All of that stuff in the Mideast is important, who will be president, that's all important. But I've got the wrong jacket,"...

If you’ve spent any time on social media, particularly in the politicalsphere, chances are you’ve encountered an internet troll or two. This election cycle has been er, um… interesting. I never thought I’d long for the days the so-called Paulbots would troll my feeds lecturing me about liberty and the Constitution and Dr. Paul. At least most of those accounts were real. Alas… Not so in 2016. The Trumpbots, or accounts that seem to exist solely to attack those with unfavorable views of The Donald, are a special breed of vicious. I’ve learned it’s best to ignore, block, and move...