Sen. Graham Says Current Democratic 'Radical' Agenda Causes 'Most Dangerous' Times Since 1930s
23:20 GMT 09.01.2022 (Updated: 18:25 GMT 03.11.2022)
© AP Photo / Susan Walsh
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Among other things, Graham responded to Biden's Thursday speech marking the anniversary of January 6, in which he avoided mentioning former President Donald Trump by name, instead referring to him as a "defeated former president" whose "bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution."
Because of President Biden and his Democratic colleagues' "radical" legislative agenda, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned that Americans are living in the "most dangerous times since the late ’30s."
In an interview with John Catsimatidis, Graham spoke about a wide range of issues, including the omicron variant of COVID-19, vaccinations, the January 6 riot anniversary and the upcoming 2022 elections. With regard to the latter, he predicted that Americans will be motivated to vote "not based on what happened on January 6, but based on this failed Democratic radical agenda."
"These folks running our country in the House and the Senate and Biden don't know what they're doing. Ramping inflation, broken borders, turning Afghanistan back over to terrorists," he said while speaking about the current issues with the Biden administration. "These are the most dangerous times since the late ’30s."
Graham also predicted that Republicans will make significant gains in November's elections and that Trump would win the 2024 presidential election.
"We’re not a socialist country," he said in response to proposals to "pack" the US Supreme Court or eliminate the Electoral College. "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."
January 6 was a "dark day," according to the senator, and those who attacked the Capitol "need to be punished," but said Trump should not be held responsible for the protesters' behavior.
He slammed Biden's Capitol riot anniversary speech, claiming that the events of that day, when Trump supporters rushed the Capitol to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, would not lead to Democratic victories in 2022.
"It was an effort on his part to create a brazen political moment, to try to deflect from their failed presidency,” Graham said of the speech. "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 2022 they are going to reject the Democratic Party."
The senator first condemned the speech while Biden was still in the middle of giving it. Graham tweeted his displeasure with Biden's statements, calling them a "brazen" politicization of the event.
Finally, 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.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 6, 2022
With his mentioning of the dangerous '30s, Graham was likely referring to the 1929 stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression in the following decade, raising questions about the efficiency of the capitalist economic system, while socialist and communist movements were on the rise. In order to stabilize the economy and safeguard workers, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented the New Deal, which featured programs such as Social Security, the Works Progress Administration, and the National Labor Relations Act.
