Graham told Biden attacks on Hunter didn’t satisfy Trump supporters: report

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) reportedly called President Biden after the 2020 election in an attempt to revive their long-standing friendship by saying his attacks on the president’s son Hunter Biden had done little to appease Trump voters. 

The New York Times reported that Graham reached out to President Biden in mid-November, while the senator was also publicly supporting former President Trump’s attacks on the results of the election. The Times cited three people familiar with the conversation who said Graham told President Biden that targeting Hunter Biden hadn’t appealed to many Trump voters in his home state.

Last year, Graham called for a special counsel to be named to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China, calling it a “good idea” to look into whether “any crimes were committed.”

Though he was willing to work with any Republicans, sources close to the president told the Times that he saw attacks on his family as being unforgivable.

President Biden was dismissive of what he saw as Graham’s attempts to have it both ways, sources told the Times.

When reached for comment by The Hill, a representative from Graham’s office said they disputed the Times’s reporting. His office stated that it was the president who had called Graham.

“Lindsey’s been a personal disappointment because I was a personal friend of his,” President Biden later said in a December interview. Despite being on different sides of the aisle, the two men had long shared a friendship as Senate colleagues, with each expressing admiration for the other.

In an interview, Graham once described the president as “as good a man as God ever created.”

However, after President Biden’s remarks of disappointment, Graham shot back, saying, “It’s not personal and it breaks my heart that this happened, but I’m hell-bent on making sure we live in a country where everybody gets looked at when there’s a reason.”

Updated 4:45 p.m.