Lindsey Graham, the progressive from South Carolina.
>> Nooo.
>> No, he's a progressive, but he's got some good things, too, okay?
But Lindsey Graham, I said to him, Lindsey, you gotta go along with this.
We were all set to get it done, you gotta go along with this.
He says, so let me get this straight.
If they charge us, we charge them, the same thing?
He said, it's not his strength, other things are his strength.
He said, so, they charge us, we charge them, same thing, right?
Yeah, you got my vote.
>> There have been many people over the years that have attempted to the best of
their ability to kiss Donald Trump's butt.
But few people in history have gotten less for their effort.
Lindsey Graham has spent years, humiliating years,
embarrassing himself by going on TV and defending Donald Trump.
And sucking up to Donald Trump, tearing up for Donald Trump.
And this is what he gets for his efforts.
Donald Trump going before Republican audiences and calling him a progressive.
It's not the first time he's done it, by the way.
Back in March 2022, at a fundraising dinner, he said,
there are a couple of senators.
And we have our progressive senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham.
He's a progressive, but he's our progressive.
So for more than a year, behind his back, at rallies, in front of him,
at fundraisers, he's just been dragging Lindsey Graham through the mud.
And, look, Lindsey Graham's a terrible guy,
I'm not gonna spare a lot of my own tears on him.
But I will also say that,
there's a lot of things about America that aren't the way that I would like.
The fact that words mean absolutely nothing, though,
that bothers me, because I feel like we have a very rich, diverse language.
There's so many words in English.
Why do we have to SAP all of the meaning from words?
Whether it's progressive or you can insert your own, you've probably seen it happen.
Anyway, that's what's happening to Lindsey Graham.
Starting with you, David, what do you think?
>> Okay, so in this world where Joe Biden is a socialist,
I guess it makes sense that Lindsey Graham is a progressive
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH]
>> If they're gonna move the entire
spectrum, I guess that's how it goes.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, I'm pretty sure back in 2016,
Trump gave out Lindsey Graham's cell phone number, is that right?
Cuz I remember that happening [LAUGH], okay?.
And then for the next whatever years,
Lindsey Graham just kissed Trump's butt again and again and again and again.
And there's nothing that Lindsey Graham can possibly do for [LAUGH] Trump not
to at least somehow throw Lindsey Graham under the bus in some way.
Whether it's calling him a progressive, whether it's doing something else,
this is going to be an ongoing thing.
Because, again, part of Trump's whole shit is that he has to be above everyone else.
He has to put everyone else down, regardless of how much they love him,
in the public's eye.
He has to be the one that appears to be the leader, and
the leader's gotta put their people in line sometimes.
And that's essentially what Trump is doing here,
he's asserting his dominance over the party.
>> Maybe my New York City hater jokes,
their brain is working here, but it feels like
he's using progressive as some sorta innuendo.
For the types of rumors that you hear about Lindsey Graham,
cuz no other explanation makes any type of sense whatsoever.
John saying that words at the meet, he's not calling him an actual
progressive or liberal, he's calling him something else.
It's hard for me to separate that from Donald Trump's belittling nature,
you know what I mean?
So to me, it sounds like he's basically, yeah, Lindsey Graham, he's progressive.
>> Yeah.
>> It's hard for me to read that any other way.
>> I had not thought of that.
Are we supposed to believe that it's about policy? How can you justify calling
Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, by the way, okay?
This is one of the most conservative states in the country, period.
The idea that that dude is progressive in any way outside of maybe his own
personal life, allegedly, I don't understand how he could be doing this.
>> Yeah, unless it's what David was saying, that it's Trump's massive shifting
of the rhetorical overton window, and everything else has to be dragged with it.
If it's not that, well, it definitely isn't substantively policy.
But I think what makes your case even better is that, if anyone were to.
From a policy position, try to make the case that Lindsey Graham,
it wouldn't be Trump.
Trump doesn't care about any of this policy stuff,
he doesn't spare a thought for it.
So, whatever it is that's leading him to call him that, it definitely ain't policy.
>> Also, Trump is the only Republican who has said publicly within
the last eight years that, yo, no, you shouldn't touch Medicare.
No, social, don't touch it, the people actually really like it.
He's the only Republican who has said that publicly.
>> Trump's a real progressive there you go.
>> Of that party.
>> Yeah, basically.
>> Yeah, and Donald Trump,
he has previously said that he was gonna be the most pro LGBTQ president ever.
He said he was gonna stop our wars.
Now, all of these were lies, every bit of it, but
he did claim that he held these positions, that is true.
Okay, he got into some other topics, I'd actually like to jump ahead.
>> This could be maybe the most important part of what I'm going to say,
because this is going to be a major announcement.
Are you ready, is everybody ready?
>> [APPLAUSE] >> I will be retiring the name Crooked
from Hillary Clinton and her moniker, and I'm gonna give her a new name.
I don't know, maybe Lovely Hillary or Beautiful Hillary, but
I'm going to retire the name Crooked.
So that we can use the name for
Joe Biden because he'll be known from now on as Crooked Joe Biden.
You would think that Hillary [LAUGH] would be very happy today.
I think she's out there someplace celebrating, because there's never been
anyone in the history of American politics so crooked or dishonest as Joe Biden.
>> Okay, so it could have been a major announcement, I don't think it was.
They seemed a little bit disappointed, to be fair.
Now, to his credit, he did give them a little bit to chew on,
they liked the Lovely Hillary, the beautiful Hillary.
A little bit of casual, insulting Hillary Clinton's appearance,
just to reassure all of them.
That she is not as attractive as the wife that he barely has a relationship with or
the dozens of women he's alleged to have sexually assaulted.
She's not as attractive as any of those women in his past.
But he has apparently given up on trying to come up with a better,
original nickname for Joe Biden.
He also is moving on from Sleepy Joe, I guess that just didn't get it done.
I mean, objectively, he's not living in the White House, so
clearly it didn't work.
He's just gonna go with crooked.
I could make the case for Joe Biden potentially being crooked.
We could talk about policy going back a few decades.
I don't think that's what he's gonna do with it.
But Waz, what do you think about him rolling out the crooked label again?
I mean, to piggyback off of what you said, if he used this opportunity to sorta jab
Joe Biden's extremely unhealthily cozy relationship with the banks.
The senator from Delaware, which, as you guys know,
is basically the financial capital of the United States, right?
A lot of these companies, these financial institutions are based
in Delaware because of their lax laws concerning these institutions.
The bankruptcy law that Joe Biden got pushed through,
it's nasty how crooked all of that stuff was and how cozy he was.
How he went in that room full of Wall Street people and
told them nothing will fundamentally change.
All of that stuff is messed up and pretty crooked, but
we know that's not what Trump's gonna do.
>> Yeah. >> He may insert that at some point, but
I think the thought process here is as simple as, hey,
Crooked Hillary worked, sleepy Joe didn't.
How about Crooked Joe?
>> [LAUGH] >> I think that's as far as the thought
process is here.
And so he's gonna try to claim that once again, Trump is the outsider somehow for
president.
Trump is the outsider, Joe Biden is the only crooked one in the race, and
that's what's gonna take him down.
If this is what he's running on,
it's not gonna work, considering Trump's already been president.
People have been there, they've seen it, not that happy with it.
I think the only risk Democrats have here at all is turnout,
can they get young people out to vote.
Because ultimately, if they can do just enough of that,
then whoever's in the race, and I assume it's gonna be Trump and Biden.
I don't think there's really any question here in my mind what the results are gonna
be, because of what we already seen.
There's no longer this aura around Trump and,
maybe he can be different than a previous president.
Because he's now already been president and people know who he is.
>> Yeah, let's dig into that just a little bit because there's a variety of different
ways, obviously, that you can run for president.
It becomes a little bit more complicated when you've already held the office,
pitching yourself as a total outsider, as you sorta laughed at a little bit.
It seems a little bit weird, you were the President didn't already.
But you could run on it like a sorta affirmative platform of all the things
that you're gonna get done.
And I'm sure he's gonna say, we're gonna do the wall today,
he was saying we're gonna do a travel ban again.
So, everything's being rebooted these days, but
you also can run against the other side.
Democrats do that all the time, pointing out how terrible they are,
how bad it would be if they got into office.
They're definitely, whether it's Trump and
his rhetoric, right wing media Jim Jordan and all of them.
They're trying to gin up all this stuff about Joe Biden,
that maybe could play into the label of him being crooked or whatever.
But, do you think that that's really gonna be a big part of this race,
really trying to focus on either the scandals or
the supposed crimes of Joe Biden, the terrible state of the country?
Or is it just gonna kinda be, well, that's not really gonna hit, so
I guess we're gonna go with the culture war stuff?
>> I mean, they gotta go with inflation, economy, gas prices.
If they were smart, that's what they hit the guy on,
that's where I think he's vulnerable.
This sense that people have that things aren't going necessarily well if you're
a normal working person.
I would hope [LAUGH] that's what we would be discussing, right?
How do we make these things better for people?
But knowing Trump, I could see him going the Hunter Biden route and
sorta trying to get in the mud with it.
It's Trump, it's the Republicans, you shouldn't expect anything less.
>> It's gonna be tough because Trump, I mean, he was able to win before,
and that was sorta a mixture of actually thinking back.
I forget how much culture war stuff was really in that, but a lot of it was about,
hey, Hillary is crooked.
And do you really want someone, just a typical politician once again,
or do you want someone who's an outsider?
It was kinda his play, not maybe in those words, but
that's kinda what he was trying to push.
That same play doesn't work this time, because he's not an outsider,
even though he can try to pretend to be an outsider.
So he may try, I mean, clearly he's gonna try to call Biden crooked and put him
in the same sorta lane as Hillary, which you can argue they are in similar lanes.
But it's not going to be as effective unless he ties it in with what Waz said,
in terms of how people are actually feeling.
In terms of whether it's the cost of housing, gas prices,
things that are actual kitchen table issues.
I think that's what's gonna be a winning message for them.
But again, Trump, he was president for four years,
did that stuff get better [LAUGH]?
What message does he really have to latch on here to,
considering he's already been president and none of that stuff improved?
>> Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, I don't remember too much of the culture war stuff from that cycle.
It's definitely she's crooked also, did you know she's a woman?
They did a lot of that sorta stuff.
Generalized deep state, change without any promise of policy change,
the vague kinda overall change.
At that point, of course, the Republicans hadn't decided that the greatest threat to
the republic was drag queens or trans swimmers or something.
A lot of the right wing punnets at that point were still routinely doing drag
themselves or playing gay roles in media, like Michael Knowles.
They hadn't yet figured out that that was a thing that was deeply,
passionately one of their biggest concerns of their life.