Trump, Graham fight again, now over US abortion policy
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The long and occasionally quixotic relationship between former President Donald Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham, both Republicans, has again turned negative after the South Carolina senator criticized Trump for refusing to support a federal abortion ban.
Trump repeatedly disparaged Graham on his social media site and said he regretted endorsing the senator during his last reelection campaign. Graham, a staunch abortion opponent who has pushed for a national ban, did not back down from his criticism, saying Trump’s view was an “error.”
But some observers of the Trump-Graham dynamic think both Republicans benefit from their public strife.
For Trump, they say, creating public distance from anti-abortion advocates might help him blunt President Joe Biden’s attacks on an issue that Democrats have long credited for electoral victories since the U.S. Supreme Court, with three justices
Trump nominated, overturned Roe v. Wade. Graham, meanwhile, gets to burnish his conservative bona fides against years of home-state criticism that he is too liberal.
State Rep. John McCravy, a Republican who sponsored South Carolina’s new law that bans most abortions at six weeks, said he could not see how the backand-forth really harmed either Trump or Graham with voters.
Trump “wants to get elected, and I think that appearing to be moderate helps him to get elected,” McCravy said. “Regardless of what they say, I think he’s taking the practical side of this. He’s pointing out something that’s true and using that to show that he’s not an extremist.”
Spokespeople for Trump’s campaign and Graham’s Senate office did not immediately comment when asked about the squabble.
The two have been at odds before.
They started off that way in the 2016 campaign when both sought the presidential nomination. Shortly after Trump launched his bid, Graham questioned
Trump’s mental fitness for office, calling him a “jackass” who “shouldn’t be commander in chief” for making disparaging remarks about then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of Graham’s closest allies.
Campaigning in Graham’s home state a day later, Trump opened a rally by calling Graham a “lightweight” and “idiot” before reading out the senator’s private cellphone number to the crowd’s delight and disbelief. That move led Graham to poke fun at destroying the phone after being deluged with angry messages.
Graham ultimately abandoned his own presidential effort and did not attend the 2016 convention, saying he would back neither Trump nor Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and that the Republican Party had been “conned.”
But after Trump’s election, Graham was all in. He became one of the president’s top Senate confidants and a frequent golf partner. Saying there was “an obligation” to help a president, Graham told The Associated Press in a 2018 interview that he had warmed to Trump.