Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / Lindsey Graham Dead at 71: “Sudden Illness,” Trump’s Rush to Control the Narrative & the Receipts They’ll Bury

Transcript

Lindsey Graham Dead at 71: “Sudden Illness,” Trump’s Rush to Control the Narrative & the Receipts They’ll Bury · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Surviving Politics-I.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Look, it doesn't matter what political stance you're on.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've all heard and seen the news by now.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's several days old at this point, but Senator Lady, I'm sorry, Senator Lindsay Graham is dead at 71.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: But living in a deep red state, you're probably seeing a lot of people praise his legacy right now.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And for those of us who are progressive, it's just a reminder of the massive gap between what they're actually seeing on the news and what actual damage he's really done.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't celebrate anyone passing away, but I'm not going to stay quiet while they try to erase this hypocrisy.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: We need to talk about the rule of seats, his sudden shift into supporting Trump, and the incredibly strange timing of how this all went down.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Before the MAGA crowd starts coming from my throat, no, I do not celebrate when someone passes away.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not dancing on anyone's grave, but let's be real, I'm also not about to sit here, play nice, and let the media synthesize his legacy.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I do not forget about the sheer amount of damage this man has done, or the heartbreaking hypocrisy he stood for.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, the way this all went down is feeling incredibly suspicious.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Things move fast in politics, but Southern politics is on a whole other level, in my opinion.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's just because I live here and I don't really know anything different other than being a very blue dot in a very red state.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: But there's always some kind of drama and behind the scenes deal going on, and nothing is ever as simple as it looks at the surface.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I know that it's like that in blue states as well, but I think there's a big difference, and I'm sure a lot of you will agree with me on that.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: But unless you've been living under a literal rock, you already know the massive news that took place a few days ago when Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is dead at the age of 71.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me pause right here and lay down the ground rule for the MAGA crowd that I know secretly hate listen to the show to monitor the local opposition.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let me look at you dead in the audio interface.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I do not, absolutely do not celebrate death.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I do not dance on anyone's graves.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't pop champagne when a public figure passes away.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I do believe in basic human dignity.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And quite frankly, the universe has a funny way of keeping score.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: If I think he was murdered, that may be a different episode.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: It might come up in this one as I ramble.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: But and this is a massive underlined but do not confuse civilty with amnesia.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I do not celebrate.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: But also don't forget, and I'm not gonna sit here and participate in this whole thing of don't speak ill of the dead.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just because someone has died does not eliminate the bad things that they did.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I will not forget those things because we are still going to have to continue.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: The state of South Carolina, especially, is still gonna have to continue with the things that he did and the hypocritical stance that he stood on.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna sit here and speak of him as if he's a legend.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're allowed to look at receipts.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Most importantly, we're allowed to ask questions.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: But let's be real, the telling this whole thing, the official press release, it's all feeling a little bit suspicious to me.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to look at what we've been told so far.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: The official word from his office is that he passed away from a brief and sudden illness.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think the way that I was understanding it is he had a tear in his main artery.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So basically he had a massive sudden heart issue, and then he was gone.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the political world we live in today, nobody takes anything at face value.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the second something happens, the rumor mill starts flying.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what I find very interesting is how Donald Trump and the rest of the Republican Party handled it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Trump immediately went on social media, called it devastating, and essentially told everyone to reject any rumors of foul play.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just funny to me how the same group of people who usually love a good conspiracy theory are now running around and telling everyone, stay calm, don't ask questions, trust the medical examiner.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why is there such a rush to lock down the narrative?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like they just want to hurry up and put a sister Darlene in the seat to finish this term and close the book as fast as possible.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not closing that book.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Democrats do not need to close this book.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: We need to look at how Lindsay got here.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Who he was at the end was completely different from who he used to be.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: We have to look at who Lindsey Graham actually was before he fell in line with Trump.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So back in 2015 and 16, Lindsey Graham wasn't just a critic to Donald Trump.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was one of the biggest haters.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: He was John McCain's right-hand man, and they were always traveling the world together, taking, talking about different traditional old school Republican values.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And Lindsay didn't hold back.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: He stood in front of cameras and literally said, tell Donald Trump to go to hell, quote unquote.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: He called him a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: He even warned his own party on CNN saying, quote, if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed and we will deserve it.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: End of quote.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: He was incredibly clear about how he felt.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: There was no confusion.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then almost overnight, he completely flipped.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, the guy who told Trump to go to hell was his favorite golf partner.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: The guy who called him a bigot and was screamed at the top of his lungs on the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend Trump's judges to protect him from investigations.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do you go from pure hatred to total obedience like that?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get it.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask mainstream news channels, they'll say it's just political survival.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Lindsay knew South Carolina voters loved Trump, and if he wanted to keep his job, he had to play nice.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: But to a lot of us, that explanation feels too easy.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: The way he defended Trump seemed desperate.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't look like a normal political deal.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: It looked like he was being forced.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it makes me wonder what happened on Bat Golf Course?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of leverage did they have on him?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Which leads us to the rumors, he spent his entire career trying to hide.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, living in the South, there's always these open secrets, these things that people whisper about but nobody says out loud.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And for decades, Lindsey Graham's personal life was the ultimate open secret in Washington and South Carolina.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: He was a a longtime bachelor in a party obsessed with traditional marriage and family structures.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: For years, people did make jokes about it, and the internet got a hold of it, and the rumors exploded with that hashtag Lady Graham.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So there was an adult film star named Sean Harding, and he publicly claims that Lady G was the nickname Lindsay went by among male sex workers in DC.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But then come the most famous rumor: the claim that sex workers were shared details about his body, specifically referring to certain markings in certain places that he would refer to as his ladybugs.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I'm not here to get into the gross details, and I really don't care about anyone's private life.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I actually vote for people to have a private life.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: In a normal world, what consenting adults do is their own damn business.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem, and the reason I will never say quite about this, is the hypocrisy of it all.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Lindsey Graham spent his entire career voting to strip away the rights of the LGBTQIAQ community.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: He voted to ban same-sex marriage.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: He even voted against expanding hate crime laws to protect queer people.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: As you all know, I'm a victim of hate crimes, that really hit hard with me.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: He stood in the way of basic non-discrimination protections.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when the MAGA movement started attacking trans people, Lindsay fell right in line.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he helped push these policies to restrict their health care.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: He used trans people as political props to fire up his base.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Think of how messed up that is.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: If these rumors about him are true, if he's living a double life behind closed doors while publicly passing laws that hurt queer kids growing up in his own state, that's so fucked.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: He helped build a closet that he's trapped in.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then he locked the door from inside just to keep his power.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something we cannot forget.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I will not forget.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I want to look at the actual timing of his death because this is where things get really weird for me.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So Lindsey Graham didn't pass away after being sick in a hospital week for beds.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: He had literally just gotten off a plane.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: He had just returned to Washington from a trip to Ukraine.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just 24 hours before he died, he was sitting across from President Zelensky talking about war strategy and sanctions.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that timeline, y'all.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Lindsay was a major foreign policy hog.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: He spent his entire career pushing for military action and advising Trump on global conflicts and making serious enemies around the world.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: He goes to an active war zone, comes back to the U.S.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: and immediately drops dead from a sudden illness.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, but I feel like you'd have to be incredibly naive not to look at that and not find it suspicious.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: When someone with that much influence on the global stage suddenly dies the second they land back home, it is totally fair to ask questions about the official press release.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: The red state media wants us to think that it's just bad timing, but given how much tension there is in the world right now, it feels highly convenient.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And while we're talking about situations with aging Republican leaders, we have to talk a minute about Mitch McConnell.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: The media is totally focused on Lindsey Graham right now, but the silence around Mitch McConnell is getting really strange.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: For months we've seen these terrifying moments where he completely freezes at the podium, lapsed into silence, he keeps disappearing from the public eye for long stretches.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: People in Washington are starting to wonder if Mitch is even running things anywhere, or if the Republican Party is basically doing a weakened up Bernie situation with him just to keep control of the Senate.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: It really shows how the government and the GOP treats its leaders.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: With Lindsay, he dies suddenly right after a massive overseas trip.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: With Mitch, they keep him pinned away and don't tell the public anything about his health, or maybe even his death.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: To this administration and to this party, these guys aren't real people.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're just chess pieces to keep MAGA Pipeline moving in the red states they control.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is why the whole situation feels so heavy to me.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: When you spend decades under that much stress, constantly lying about who you are, constantly terrified that some sex worker or activist is going to leak your secrets and ruin your career.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: It does take a physical toll on your body.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: They say his heart gave out.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe biologically that's true.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But politically and personally, Lindsey Graham broke down a long ass time ago.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can't betray your friends, your values, your own identity for that long without the foundation cracking.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the MAGA world is called him a hero and flying flags at Hasstaff.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: They want to paint him as this great patriot who loves this country.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: But there are those of us who actually have to live with the laws that he has passed.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we're kind of seeing the whole picture, right?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: We see a guy who cried at John McCain's funeral, and then we see a terrified politician who spent his last years defending a man he used to despise, all because, in my opinion, he was scared of his own goddamn secrets.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I said, I'm not celebrating.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: I actually think it's truly sad when someone lives their whole life in fear just to keep a grip on power.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I will never forget the damage that he did, the judges he put on the bench, and the pure hypocrisy of his own career.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I want us to keep a close eye on South Carolina and see who they pick to replace him.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, guys, stay safe out there.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Keep your eyes open and don't let them rewrite history.