Trump and Lindsey Graham Finally Found a Disagreement
Plus: Yet another impeachment trial that likely won’t happen.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is no stranger to online hate in general and attacks from former President Donald Trump in particular. When the two men were presidential candidates in 2015, Trump read Graham’s personal cell phone number out loud during a rally, inaugurating a personal tradition of siccing his followers on people with whom he’s angry.1
In the years since, Graham has completely capitulated to Trump. His decline into abject sycophancy was masterfully detailed in a Bulwark miniseries by Will Saletan, The Corruption of Lindsey Graham. (Please vote for Will to get a Webby for the audio version of this project, it’s really superb.) But in spite of the senator’s many years of undignified fealty to the former president, a new rift has opened between Graham and Trump over the politics of abortion.
Trump made his abortion statements purely in order to help him win this fall, which is why he remains characteristically noncommittal on any specific policy. While headlines declared “Trump says abortion legislation should be left to the states,” that’s not exactly what he said. The former president’s vague statement amounted to a description of the status quo on the issue: the states “will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both” their own laws with respect to the procedure. The states have been doing just that, of course. But importantly, Trump did not rule anything out—including the possibility of signing a national abortion ban sent to a Trump White House from a Republican-led Congress.2
Trump’s only clear admission in the statement was that he is “proudly the person responsible” for getting “abortion where everybody wanted it, from a legal standpoint” by appointing the judges who overturned Roe v. Wade. But as Will points out in an article this morning, Trump framed the issue in pro-choice terms, a sign of his incoherence on (or uncaring inattentiveness to) the actual politics of the issue.
Graham didn’t like Trump’s statement and took to social media to air his grievances:
The states’ rights only rationale today runs contrary to an American consensus that would limit late-term abortions and will age about as well as the Dred Scott decision.
The science is clear - a child at fifteen weeks is well-developed and is capable of feeling pain.
Trump took the opportunity to insult Graham:
Graham responded to Trump’s posts by telling a group of us reporters in the Capitol Monday evening that while he believes Trump “was a great pro-life president,” the presumptive Republican nominee is in the wrong on the issue:
The idea of the Republican party abandoning the opposition to late-term abortion I think would be a mistake, because most Americans oppose late-term abortion. So for the pro-life movement, it’s about the child, not geography. So if you’re turning the pro-life movement into a geographical movement, I think you’re making a mistake.
Graham’s sudden willingness to criticize a position the former president has staked out is interesting. Making a break here with Trump is risky but potentially politically advantageous. Graham is up for re-election next in 2026, and reinforcing his pro-life bona fides could help endear him in new ways to powerful and important groups that operate in South Carolina. Evangelicals and anti-abortion advocacy groups often take their direction from Trump, but they also love a champion on the issue. Graham’s defense of a principled position could help insulate him from a potential (and now, more likely) primary challenge.
Trump’s position on abortion is like his positions on most things: entirely variable and dependent in any given moment on his mood, his short-term desires, or who is courting him. Every time a reporter tries to get Trump to take a clear position on abortion (as if it matters to the core base of his supporters), I think of the response he gave to a salient question from Maureen Dowd in 2016:
In an MSNBC interview with Chris Matthews, the formerly pro-choice Trump somehow managed to end up to the right of the National Right to Life Committee when he said that for women, but not men, “there has to be some form of punishment” if a President Trump makes abortion illegal.
Trump quickly recanted and even told CBS’s John Dickerson that “the laws are set. And I think we have to leave it that way.”
“This was not real life,” he told me. “This was a hypothetical, so I thought of it in terms of a hypothetical. So that’s where that answer came from, hypothetically.”
Given his draconian comment, sending women back to back alleys, I had to ask: When he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan, was he ever involved with anyone who had an abortion?
“Such an interesting question,” he said. “So what’s your next question?”
Trump doesn’t have to give a clear answer on abortion—he didn’t then, and he doesn’t now. Just look at what happened immediately after he broke with the position of nearly every significant pro-life advocacy group this weekend: Each one reaffirmed its support for his 2024 campaign. Like everyone else in MAGA world, they are simply along for the ride. Graham is, too. Whatever divide has opened between them, it will close again the moment Trump needs a favor or Graham demonstrates his renewed loyalty, as when Graham voted against the foreign aid package he had previously supported.
No Trial, No Error
House Republicans are set to deliver to the Senate this Wednesday the articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the first time a member of the president’s cabinet has been impeached since the Senate acquitted Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876 after the House impeached him on (well-founded) corruption charges. But unlike legitimate impeachments, such those against then-President Trump, the Mayorkas case is not likely to receive an actual Senate trial.
Whether they succeed or fail, Senate impeachment trials are time-consuming and difficult. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is expected to try to avoid the hassle by pushing the articles of impeachment aside. This has to be handled with care, because the Senate impeachment rules state that the Senate “shall . . . proceed to the consideration” of articles of impeachment “at 1 o’clock afternoon” on the day after the House formally presents the articles to the Senate. The rules imply that the “consideration” will be the start of the trial. But the Senate’s Democratic leadership seems to believe that they can avoid a trial either by holding a quick vote to table or dismiss the impeachment, or by referring the articles to a committee where they will sit in limbo.
The process about to unfold is unprecedented in the handling of a Senate trial, but remember that the impeachment itself is unprecedented. The process, charges, and House impeachment vote were panned as nakedly political, including from other Republicans. The impeachment vote initially failed after some GOP lawmakers broke ranks.
In a memo Monday, Ian Sams, the White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, wrote:
This effort is a complete waste of time that constitutional and legal experts have said is
“unconstitutional” and that even Senate Republicans have made clear they don’t want to focus
on.
There are quite a few Republicans in the Senate who want a (show) trial of Mayorkas. But they’re almost certainly not going to get their wish, and neither are the several House impeachment managers looking for unlimited C-SPAN action.
Berning your retinas
If you were one of the Americans, Mexicans, or Canadians in the path of the total solar eclipse yesterday, I hope you enjoyed it and didn’t burn your eyes. I didn’t get my hands on a pair of the special glasses for viewing the eclipse, but I did snap this picture of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) checking out the moon a few minutes before it reached maximum coverage of the sun, which in D.C. was about 85 percent. In case you can’t tell from the photo, Sanders is wearing eclipse glasses over his regular spectacles.
During both of the most recent solar eclipses, I’ve found myself forgetting about the celestial happening until the day it arrives, leaving me without the proper glasses. I don’t think I’m missing that much if it’s only a partial eclipse—the sun looks the same to me as it always does when I stare at it with my eyes uncovered—but I would love to hear your counterarguments if you’ve got them.
The next total solar eclipse to pass over part of the United States will take place on August 23, 2044; another will then traverse the country from California to Florida in August 2045. However, there will be one hitting parts of Europe, including Ibiza, Spain, on August 12, 2026. That could be a good vacation to take.
Fun fact: I was a part of the team that created and filmed Graham’s comedic response to that incident. If you can overlook what the senator has done since, the video is still worth the watch.
The likeliest form this would take is a ban (with exceptions) on the procedure after a certain number of weeks. Various proposals and state policies currently being floated and enacted range from 6 weeks to 20. My colleague Marc Caputo reports that Trump privately favors a federal ban starting at 15 or 16 weeks.
I wasn't planning to pay attention to the eclipse but was in southern AZ at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument where the kind folks were handing out free eclipse glasses. So I looked and it was pretty cool, sort of like the Apple logo if the apple was round. Then it went totally black and 5000 foreigners ran by. KIDDING.
You can count the days that Lindsay Graham will go to Trump and ask “sir, sir can I please stick my head up your ass again?”