Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Fox News Wednesday that Donald Trump was being treated like a criminal simply for challenging election results, inviting fierce fact-checks from critics on the platform formerly called Twitter, now known as X.
As many Republicans have done, Graham noted that the four-time-indicted Trump is facing charges in court venues where he’s not popular.
“He’s been prosecuted in a way to make challenging an election a crime just for him,” he said on “Hannity.”
The “challenging an election” downplay didn’t fly.
“He didn’t challenge it. He tried to steal it,” one X user wrote. “Nice try Lindsey.”
“No he is being prosecuted for attempting to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power,” another said.
“They all act like all he did was challenge the election,” someone else chimed in.
In a misguided comparison, Graham referenced Democrat Stacey Abrams’ refusal to concede her 2018 defeat to Republican Brian Kemp in the Georgia election for governor. Abrams has acknowledged that Kemp won but claimed a broken system, including allegations of voter suppression, led to Kemp winning “under the rules of the game at the time, but the game was rigged against the voters of Georgia.”
Trump was indicted for a fourth time this week, this time for racketeering in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the election results in the swing state of Georgia. That’s on top of charges he already faced for willfully lying about election fraud that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
He also faces charges tied to a hush money payment to a porn star and for stashing secret documents and deliberately keeping them from the government.
That’s four indictments, 91 criminal charges in all.
Here are more reactions to Graham’s whitewashing of the president’s actions.