screengrab from https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1047539615652073473
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is at the Atlantic Festival today. He was interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic’s editor-in-chief. Keep in mind that this is the publication that fired Kevin Williamson for being too controversial with his abortion position and turned around and hired Jemelle Hill, who was fired by ESPN and, while she may not actually be a racist, she can certainly render a plausible imitation of one.
Btw, yahoo's tweet has been deleted. Here's what all the hubbub's about: https://t.co/KfoFIrz6US
— Jennifer Weston (@jxw8856) October 3, 2018
That bit of dialog produced this tweet from Yahoo.
What actually happened is not what the tweet describes.
Be very careful on this folks.
Sen. Graham did NOT use that phrase to attack Dr. Ford.
Graham used the phrase to claim that is NOT what Trump is doing. Graham invoked the repulsive phrase James Carville used—contending this isn't what Trump has done.
(h/t @yashar) Video clip: https://t.co/C5jcDsDef6
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) October 3, 2018
Graham went out of his way to say that Trump shouldn’t have poked fun at the obvious holes in Christine Ford’s testimony (I’ll disagree with him on this, I think, as a society, we’ve gone from putting accusers on trial when they allege sexual misconduct to demanding they be uncritically believed even when they are obvious liars). This is how CBS describes it.
Sen. Lindsey Graham — one of embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s staunchest defenders — said he didn’t like what the president said about Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford at a rally Tuesday night, but it was “factual.”
Mr. Trump, at a rally in Mississippi Tuesday night, appeared to mock Ford’s memory and testimony displayed on Capitol Hill last week. “How did you get home? ‘I don’t remember,'” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Southaven, apparently alternating between questioner and an impression of Ford. “How did you get there? ‘I don’t remember.’ Where is the place? ‘I don’t remember.’ How many years ago was it? ‘I don’t know.'”
Graham, speaking at a rally at the Atlantic Festival in Washington, D.C., acknowledged he didn’t particularly like what Mr. Trump said.
“The bottom line is, I know what can happen to a woman who comes forward in a political environment. Dr. Ford, I thought, was treated respectfully by Miss Mitchell. I’m glad she did it. She was boring. Boring’s OK. So, I’ve been a prosecutor most of my — defense attorney and judge before I got in this business. For every woman that comes forward, God knows how many never say a word and take it to their grave. Sometimes people are accused of something they didn’t do.
“So President Trump went through a factual rendition that I didn’t particularly like, and I would tell him to knock it off. You’re not helping. But it can be worse.”
Graham brought up the Juanita Broadrrick allegation from the late 1990s and said he thinks the nation has “come a long way” since she and Bill Clinton’s other accusers talked about their allegations in 1998.
Graham said he thought Ford was treated “respectfully,” but Kavanaugh was treated “like crap,” to which the crowd booed.
“Yeah, well, boo yourself,” Graham responded.
WATCH: Lindsey Graham responds to boos at Atlantic festival: "Boo yourself" https://t.co/XItmFKdGxU pic.twitter.com/7F4qLciHhK
— The Hill (@thehill) October 3, 2018
The trailer park comment is in the context of showing how Ford’s treatment differed from that received by Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey.
Let me say it again to anyone who really thinks that the press tries to play it down the middle and occasionally makes mistakes: ARE YOU HIGH? There is no possible way to explain how all these errors run it exactly one direction if the people making them aren’t rabid partisans.
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