No one embodies our country’s political descent more than Lindsey Graham | Opinion

I knew things were different the morning after Barack Obama announced that Navy SEALs had hunted down Osama bin Laden. In my coastal South Carolina neighborhood in a county where the American flag is flown proudly from many a front porch, an area that would years later vote for Donald Trump twice by a wide margin, the celebration was subdued. Though it felt more like mourning than celebration, my neighbors weren’t upset bid Laden was dead, just that it was a Democrat who had killed him.

It wasn’t like the joy that had spontaneously erupted in front of the White House even before Obama had taken to the podium. It wasn’t a display of the kind of American pride long predicted would occur if bin Laden would have been captured by the Bush administration. It wasn’t much of anything at all, except for rationalizations that the accomplishment belonged to George W. Bush, who had been out of office for more than two years, or the SEAL who pulled the trigger, as long as the credit went to anyone and everyone except Obama.

Not even the successful end to a 10-year-hunt for the world’s most wanted terrorist, the man most responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks – the man responsible for the murder of thousands of Americans and the spark that lit the fuse on two decades-long wars that cost us trillions in treasure and even more in blood and a sense of security – could reunite us.

When people hate their political opponents more than they love themselves, there’s no compromise, no feat that can bridge the divide. It’s what I saw in 2011 after the bin Laden killing and what I’ve seen since Donald Trump was indicted for the second time. No one embodies that change more than Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior U.S. senator.

There was a time Graham was considered a statesman, a man willing to reach across the aisle if that was in the best interest of the country. No more. After a special counsel unsealed a damning indictment about Trump – including his reckless regard for the nation’s most sensitive security secrets, including about nuclear weapons and our vulnerability to attack – Graham didn’t caution his supporters to let the process play itself out and only demand that it be fair and transparent. Instead, he joined a growing mob of conspiracy theories and fabulists trying to convince the country that Trump is the real victim.

His descent into a far-right caricature of the man I once voted for hit a new low over the weekend on ABC News. He pulled on tight his cloak of performative self-righteousness to claim he was speaking for all Republicans while falsely claiming Trump was being treated unfairly by the justice system. He angrily raised his voice as spittle escaped from his mouth.

“Most Republicans believe we live in a country where Hillary Clinton did very similar things and nothing happened to her,” Graham said then later tweeted.

Most Republicans believe that falsehood because men like Graham have repeatedly told them lies or refused to disabuse them of misinformation.

The facts are these: Trump was treated differently by the justice system – because most anyone else would have been arrested long before Trump ended up in a Florida courtroom pleading not guilty. The Department of Justice and others worked with Trump for two years to have him return extremely sensitive documents that did not belong to him. They essentially begged him, hoping to avoid where we ended up.

Not only did he repeatedly refuse, he repeatedly lied to DOJ and his own lawyers and advisers. He hid documents even after the FBI searched his home, and he encouraged others to stonewall. He shared sensitive information with those who should not have seen it.

It bears repeating that Trump had taken secrets. It’s not a simple dispute over documents or absent-mindedness, which are among the ridiculous excuses being floated by Trump supporters.

Trump was given a thousand and one chances to avoid indictment and arrest but refused at every turn. That’s not in the same universe of what Clinton, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Colin Powell, James Comey and other high-level officials who’ve faced questions about their handling of classified information did.

Graham knows this.

Graham also knows that the quickest way to get conservatives to forget about police brutality and shootings is to yell “What about Chicago?!”

And he knows the easiest way to deceive tens of millions of Americans about why Trump is facing criminal charges is to yell “What about Hillary?!”

Gone are the days when a threat to the nation itself would unite us, like how Democrats rallied around a Republican president after the Sept. 11 attacks and pushed his approval rating into record-high territory. These days, we have a party so committed to maintaining or regaining power it makes excuses for men who breezily put all our lives at risk. Not even a violent insurrection attempt on Jan. 6, 2021 in the heart of our democracy was enough to convince them to change course.

South Carolina’s own Lindsey Graham is leading us as we speed down a dark, perilous path.