Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) predicted on Sunday that in 2022 Americans will vote “not based on what happened on Jan. 6 but based on this failed Democratic radical agenda,” claiming that because of that agenda, the nation has fallen into “the most dangerous times since the late ’30s.”
Graham said in an interview with John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM that former President Trump would win his next election bid and that the Republican Party would make sweeping gains in the November midterm elections because “liberal policies do not represent America.”
“We’re not a socialist country,” he said, criticizing talks of “packing” the U.S. Supreme Court or abolishing the Electoral College. “What Democrats are trying to do is tear up the Constitution. They are trying to change the balance of power in this country. … This is the most radical approach to our constitutional checks and balances in my lifetime and maybe ever. There’s going to be a backlash in 2022.”
The senator cast doubt that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 — when pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 election results — would spur Americans to vote blue in the next election.
Graham called Jan. 6 a “dark day” for the country and reiterated his calls for those who participated in the riot to be prosecuted, saying, “People need to be punished. And they will be.”
But he said he didn’t blame Trump for the actions of the rioters.
President Biden on Thursday accused Trump indirectly of inciting the Jan. 6 uprising, saying on the anniversary of the event, “For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol.”
Graham slammed Biden’s speech, calling it “awful” and a politicization of the event.
“It was an effort on his part to create a brazen political moment, to try to deflect from their failed presidency,” he said during the interview with Catsimatidis. “I was really disappointed in the tone of the president and the vice president — of the politicized Jan. 6. The American people reject what happened on Jan. 6, but come November 2022, they are going to reject the Democratic Party.”
It was not the first time the senator criticized the speech. In the middle of Biden’s Thursday speech, Graham tweeted his dissatisfaction with the remarks, calling them a “brazen” politicization of the event.