When Lindsey Graham goes on TV after dinner, and presumably whatever he drinks and has with dinner, there’s a very good chance he’s going to cry. [Two video clips from March 30 and April 4, 2023, showing a tearful Graham begging Fox viewers to send any amount of money they can right NOW to Donald Trump.]
Lindsey Graham is crying and begging for money for a man who said this when he began running for president against Lindsey Graham and other Republicans. [Video clip of Donald Trump from June 16, 2015: “I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m using my own money. I’m not using the lobbyists, I’m not using donors. I don’t care.”]
That was a foundational lie of the Trump political career. Trump claimed to be “so rich” that he would never need any contributions at all and, therefore, he would be incorruptible. And now Donald Trump is the most corrupt president in history, and he has taken more money out of the pockets of his supporters than any other president in history — after first telling his supporters he didn’t need their money. That’s the person Lindsey Graham is crying for now.
Lindsey Graham has never cried for a single child who has been murdered in a classroom in America. Not one. Lindsey Graham did not go on TV to cry for nine-year-old Evelyn Dieckhaus, nine-year-old William Kinney, nine-year-old Hallie Scruggs, who were murdered in a Nashville elementary school last week by a mass murderer who also killed Katherine Koonce [age 60], the head of the school, Cynthia Peak [age 61], a substitute teacher, and Mike Hill [age 61], the school’s custodian.
Lindsey Graham did not shed a single tear for any one of those victims of America’s latest mass murderer, who used an AR-15 to fire 152 bullets in that school. After that mass murder, Lindsey Graham proudly told reporters in Washington that he owns an AR-15. He didn’t say why.
He didn’t cry while casually talking to Washington reporters in a Senate hallway about America’s latest mass murder — and he won’t cry the next time. If your child’s body is ripped apart by an AR-15 in your child’s classroom, Lindsey Graham will not cry for child and he will not cry for you.
He cried for one of Donald Trump’s nominees to the United States Supreme Court when that nominee had an uncomfortable day in a Senate confirmation hearing. Lindsey Graham cried for him. Lindsey Graham got hysterical for him. And when that Supreme Court justice, for the first time in the history of the Supreme Court, voted to revoke a constitutional right from the women of this country — and forced a 10-year-old pregnant girl to leave her state of Ohio to obtain urgently needed abortion services — Lindsey Graham did not cry. Lindsey Graham didn’t cry about the rape of that 10-year-old girl and he did not cry about what was forced upon her after the rape, by the Supreme Court that Lindsey Graham voted into place.
Professional Republicans absolutely do not cry for dead American children when they are murdered by AR-15s. Here is Tennessee Republican State Representative William Lamberth speaking to student protestors in Nashville who have spontaneously been demonstraing at the state capitol in the aftermath of the latest mass murder there.
[Video clip of Tennessee Rep. William Lamberth telling a group of young students that banning AR-15s will not make them any safer — and we ain’t banning them even if did, so goodbye . . . and good luck.]
[O’Donnell explains why banning AR-15s would make a tremendous difference and save the lives of many children. He reminds us that “400 Texas police officers were afraid to enter a classroom [in Uvalde, Texas] where children were dying for 77 minutes because they were afraid of the AR-15 inside that classroom” even though the law enforcement officials were covered in body armor and carried AR-15s of their own.]
What Republican State Representative William Lamberth and Lindsey Graham have in common with every other elected Republican in Washington is the absolute determination to make sure that every mass murderer who walks into an American school will be able to legally purchase an AR-15 to bring into that school with them. Elected Republicans are dedicated to making sure that America’s mass murderers are the very best equipped mass murderers in the world.
After the mass slaughter (less than a year ago) of 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas, the finest commentary I heard anywhere was from Lawrence O’Donnell. Nightafternight, his commentary was razor-sharp, emotionally devastating, and possessed of a furious anger, though he never even one time raised his voice.
If the United States was a nation where everyone was subjected to the laws of the land, Clarence Thomas — who will be remembered as the most corrupt Supreme Court justice in American history, who said nothing as his wife played a central role in the plot to overthrow of the U.S. government and who voted to keep her numerous seditious communications from becoming public — would already be in jail. But the U.S. has never been that kind of a country, so the man who never asked a question in oral arguments for more than 10 years is not in jail. However, the well-known sexual harasser might be in some serious shit right now. ProPublica has published a stunning report that must be read to be believed. The lengthy article begins:
In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a superyacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef.
If Thomas had chartered the plane and the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn’t necessary: He was on vacation with real estate magnate and Republican megadonor Harlan Crow, who owned the jet — and the yacht, too.
For more than two decades, Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every year from the Dallas businessman without disclosing them, documents and interviews show. A public servant who has a salary of $285,000, he has vacationed on Crow’s superyacht around the globe. He flies on Crow’s Bombardier Global 5000 jet. He has gone with Crow to the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California all-male retreat, and to Crow’s sprawling ranch in East Texas. And Thomas typically spends about a week every summer at Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.
The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the U.S. Supreme Court.
These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. . . .
Crow has deep connections in conservative politics. The heir to a real estate fortune, Crow oversees his family’s business empire and recently named Marxism as his greatest fear. He was an early patron of the powerful anti-tax group Club for Growth and has been on the board of AEI for over 25 years. He also sits on the board of the Hoover Institution, another conservative think tank.
A major Republican donor for decades, Crow has given more than $10 million in publicly disclosed political contributions. He’s also given to groups that keep their donors secret — how much of this so-called dark money he’s given and to whom are not fully known. “I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose,” Crow once told the [New York] Times.
Crow has long supported efforts to move the judiciary to the right. He has donated to the Federalist Society and given millions of dollars to groups dedicated to tort reform and conservative jurisprudence. AEI and the Hoover Institution publish scholarship advancing conservative legal theories, and fellows at the think tanks occasionally file amicus briefs with the Supreme Court. . . .
According to Thomas’s financial disclosures, he has received only two gifts since 2004.
