Deviating from McCain, Sen. Graham goes all in on Team Trump

COLUMBIA, S.C. — By the end, Sen. John McCain had rejected President Donald Trump. The president was so infuriated by McCain he put a biting reference to the dying Republican senator in his stump speech. Yet one man in Washington still had hope for bridging the gap between the two.

"I regret that he didn't have more time with President Trump," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Associated Press this week about McCain, his late friend and mentor. Graham noted McCain was able to forgive his captors during the Vietnam War. "Who knows what would have happened over time?"



Graham's unexplained optimism, his eager attempts to soften Trump's rough edges, have confused colleagues and caused double-takes across Washington. The South Carolina Republican was McCain's best friend in the Senate, a self-described student of his politics and personal integrity. But he has deviated dramatically in his approach to the tempestuous and divisive president. While others stayed their distance — McCain perhaps most of all — Graham has gone all in, transforming himself into liaison, translator and, critics say, enabler of the president.

When establishment Republicans recently nodded knowingly at an anonymous editorial criticizing Trump's run of the White House, Graham was on Fox calling it a left-wing strategy to show Trump as "crazy" and echoed the president's unproven charge that the Russia probe "is falling apart."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/deviating-from-mccain-sen-graham-goes-all-in-on-team-trump/ar-BBNfuOZ

In the above picture you can see Lindsey puckering up to kiss Trump's rump.