Lindsey Graham is lying for Trump. And it shows the real issue with the Republican party

The South Carolina senator has provided an unusually straightforward demonstration of how right-wing populism justifies itself

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) talks with reporters in between votes at the US Capitol (Getty Images)

Right-wing populists claim to speak for the people. But they don’t actually listen to the public. Instead, they define their followers as the only people worth listening to — and they then feed their followers lies and conspiracy theories. Democratic norms and laws are abandoned in favor of a pseudo-mystical belief that right-wing populist leaders are a personal embodiment of the popular will.

Over the weekend, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham provided an unusually straightforward demonstration of how right-wing populism justifies itself. As everyone who follows the news is aware, former president Donald Trump was indicted on 37 charges last week, including violations of the Espionage Act, after he allegedly took secret documents from the White House. Graham went on ABC’s This Week to defend Trump.

Under questioning from host George Stephanopoulos, Graham declined to justify Trump’s behavior and admitted Trump’s actions— hoarding secret documents, defying a government subpoena — were wrong. But he still endorsed Trump for president. When pressed to explain why, he said, “Most Republicans believe we live in a country where Hillary Clinton did very similar things, and nothing happened to her.”

Clinton did not in fact do “very similar things”. As Secretary of State, she used a private email account in violation of federal rules, not federal laws. She appears to have done so for convenience and out of carelessness. After extensive investigation, there was no evidence that she deliberately mishandled information. Trump, in contrast, is alleged to have kept classified documents in his shower, and appears to have deliberately hidden boxes from his own lawyers, as well as from the FBI. There’s no comparison.

Graham, though, isn’t arguing that there is a comparison. He’s arguing that “Republicans believe” there is a comparison.

Graham is making a populist argument. And in doing so, he shows how right-wing populist arguments are built on lies and bad faith.

In the first place, Republican beliefs in Clinton’s iniquity aren’t a spontaneous reflection of folk-wisdom. Right-wing media and GOP leaders have spent some three decades vilifying Clinton. They’ve devoted the past eight years, in particular, to claiming that her use of a private email account was one of the most important scandals ever in the history of the country. As Vox’s Ian Millhiser says, the mainstream press buttressed the right by covering the issue with an “Ahab-like obsession”. In addition, when Clinton was exonerated again in 2019, most outlets buried the story.

So, yes, a lot of people — and especially Republicans — believe Clinton violated the law in egregious ways, even though all the evidence, and repeated investigations, shows that she did not.

Graham, though, thinks that the beliefs, cultivated by Republican leaders and news media, should be prioritized over facts. If the public believes that Clinton and Trump did the same thing, and Clinton was not prosecuted, then Trump should not be prosecuted either.

GOP leaders provide their followers with talking points. Then, when their followers parrot those talking points, the GOP says that they are speaking for the public, and that their views should therefore prevail.

Graham’s populist argument also relies on framing Republicans as the one true public. Their beliefs are presented as being determinative, and as mattering more than everyone else’s.

But Republicans aren’t everyone, and are not even a majority or plurality of the public. In 2020, 46% of US adults identified as Democrats; only 43% identified as Republicans. More, solid pluralities of Americans believe Trump should be charged with crimes in the classified document case.

The belief that only Republican voices should count is central to Trumpian populism. Trump has repeatedly, obsessively insisted that votes for his opponents are illegitimate or that they don’t count. In 2020, he baselessly claimed that voters in heavily Black areas like Philadelphia had cast ballots illegally and should be disregarded and disenfranchised. Even when he won the presidential election in 2016, he insisted that “millions of people...voted illegally” for his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Graham is working from the same playbook. (White) Republican opinion is the authentic voice of the people, and should take precedence over the majority, and even over facts. Republican politicians, like Trump, channel and are validated by that true populist energy. The media, the legal system, and the country as a whole should bow to them.

Trump, for Graham, is not answerable to the law, nor to democratic institutions, nor even to the polity as a whole. He can be judged only by his followers and loyalists, who are the only legitimate public voices. Graham is implicitly arguing for a system in which a charismatic leader draws legitimacy from a narrow, imagined, exclusionary public, defined by right-wing commitments, whiteness, and the incessant drumbeat of propaganda. There’s a word for that form of government. It isn’t democracy.