Lindsey Graham Threatened Trump With 25th Amendment After Capitol Riot

According to a new book by a pair of New York Times writers, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham threatened to remove Donald Trump using the 25th Amendment during the Capitol Riot. The authors recount a story of how Graham phoned White House counsel Pat Cipollone during the riot and laid out what could happen if the violence continued. Farron Cousins explains why Graham ultimately decided not to go through with his threat.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

According to a new book written by a pair of New York times writers. The book is titled this will not pass, but according to them and the folks they spoke to Lindsay Graham actually phoned into the white house during the capital riot, January 6th, 2021 spoke to white house council at sip and suggested that they used the 25th amendment to remove Donald Trump from office. Now, this is according to an excerpt of the book published by Axios. And here's what Graham said. We'll be asking you for the 25th amendment. Then later in the afternoon, Lindsay Graham spoke to reporters and he said, people will say, I don't want to be associated with that. There will be a rallying effect for a while. The country says we're better than this.

Yeah. But that didn't really happen. Did it? Lindsay, neither did your empty threat to use the 25th amendment. I think what happened here if, of course, Lindsay Graham even did this to begin with. I have no reason to doubt these reporters, but right. The sources that they spoke to. Hmm. Because Lindsay, Graham doesn't seem like the kind of guy that would go against Donald Trump, but let's take him out their word. Let's assume everything is accurate here. You know, the sources telling the truth and Graham did make this phone call. I don't think there was any part of Lindsey Graham that was sincere about it. What we saw from Lindsey Graham through the four years of the Trump administration was this slow at first, but then very rapid metamorphosis from being an anti-Trump Republican to a full blown Donald Trump lap dog. So Lindsay Graham was not gonna do anything to compromise the favorable position that he had gained for himself as Trump's right hand, man.

Uh, I mean, hell, uh, we've had reports recently saying that Donald Trump is actually pushing Lindsay Graham to take over for Mitch McConnell as the majority leader in the Senate. If of course Republicans take back the Senate in the midterms. So Lindsay Graham has positioned himself well, and I do not believe he would legitimately do anything to compromise that. Now he likely made the phone call then in my estimation as kind of one of those, you know, cover your moments so that when people look back, assuming Trump went down for it, which of course he did not yet, Lindsay Graham would be able to say, Hey, listen, I made the phone call, right? I, I was one of the folks up there talking about the 25th amendment. And of course we do know that there were other members of the Trump administration. Some of the worst people he had put in place actually suggested this too.

You know, I think Betsy DeVos was one of them. So as bad as they were, they still looked at this much like Lindsay Graham and said, okay, well maybe, maybe we ought to do something, but it's the other statement from Graham, right? There will be a rallying effect for a while. The country says we're better than this. And there would've been a rallying effect. Had Republicans actually acknowledged what happened that day was being perpetrated by Cray Trump cultists. But they didn't right that evening after Fox news was, you know, personally talking to Donald Trump and other people inside the white house saying, you gotta get him out front of this. Let's let's make it go away. This is really bad for us. They went on the air later that evening and said, Nope, this was Antifa. Antifa did this, not Trump supporters. They were goed on by Antifa. Even the talking point today is still that, oh, maybe there were FBI operatives in there. You know, maybe this is a false flag thing. They still won't fully acknowledge that these were Trump supporters. So there may have been a effect as Lindsay Graham says with non Republicans, but for the Republican party themselves to this day, they still deny that it was their own crazy people that did this on January 6th.