Opinion: Lindsey Graham getting booed at Trump rally is both hilarious and alarming

Editor’s note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @DeanObeidallah@masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

In the years I was a full-time comedian touring the nation, I saw firsthand some tough crowds. But what GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham was subjected to at former President Donald Trump’s rally Saturday in Graham’s home state of South Carolina was far worse than I ever personally witnessed. In a word, it was a bloodbath.

The jeering began as soon as Graham was introduced to the Trump faithful. At first, Graham appeared amused by the crowd’s boos — even laughing about it. Shortly after taking the stage, the senator playfully turned to audience members behind him where a woman in MAGA gear could be seen booing him to his face while holding out a pronounced thumbs-down.

However, Graham soon began to grasp that a large segment of this Trump crowd — some of whom were yelling “traitor” — was not kidding around. From there, the lawmaker went into grovel mode as he tried to win over the audience with lines such as, “Just calm down for a second. I think you’ll like this.” Graham then told the audience, “I was born in this county,” adding, “I live 15 miles down the road. This is a place where people pay the taxes, fight the wars and tell you what they believe.”

Graham even tried a joke to get the crowd on his side, stating, “I found common ground with President Trump. It took a while to get there, folks.” He then quipped, “I come to like President Trump and he likes himself … and we got that in common.” (Pro tip from a comedian: If you are bombing with an audience, don’t mock the person the crowd loves!) After about six minutes of boos that effectively drowned him out, Graham left the stage.

Later when Trump took the podium, he needled Graham, saying, “You know you can make mistakes on occasion,” adding, “Even Lindsey down here, Sen. Lindsey Graham.” When the crowd began to boo again, Trump “half-heartedly defended“ Graham, according to The Greenville (South Carolina) News. In a joking voice, he said, “We’re gonna, we’re gonna love him. We’re gonna love him.”

I must admit it was fun to watch Graham bomb with the audience, but the roasting was another reminder of how some Trump supporters demand absolute loyalty to the former president. When Trump declared that everyone makes a “mistake,” including Graham, it appeared that the mistake was not being fully loyal to Trump.

The Greenville paper interviewed some attendees, who expressed that very sentiment. One said he was tired of Graham’s “wishy-washiness,” while another noted Graham only supported Trump when it helped him politically. Their message to all Republicans seemed to be: Remain completely loyal to Trump or you will face our wrath.

As the 2016 presidential race first got underway, Graham was a critic of Trump, calling him a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” who “doesn’t represent my party,” but he later became a stalwart ally — and frequent golfing buddy.

Graham dismissed the 2021 Senate trial over the January 6 insurrection as “an impeachment effort driven by passion and hatred against President Trump.” And after a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump in March on more than 30 felonies related to a hush money payment scheme to silence an adult film star, Graham appeared on Fox News and tearfully urged people to donate to Trump: “Go tonight. Give the president some money to fight this bullsh*t!”

But Graham has been publicly critical of Trump since he left office. For example, in March 2022, Graham said that he thought it was “a mistake” for Trump to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a “genius,” noting that “Putin’s not a genius, he’s a war criminal.”

And last month after Trump was charged with a slew of felonies over mishandling classified documents once he left office, Graham stated on ABC, “I’m not justifying his behavior,“ adding, “If it were up to me, nobody would take classified information in their garage or Mar-a-Lago.”

This demand for loyalty to Trump raises red flags since it’s a common trait of authoritarian movements. For example, Yale University professor Jason Stanley, author of “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them,” explained in a 2020 podcast interview with NPR member station KCRW that, “Fascism is based on power, loyalty, and fear of the other. The fascist leader is infallible.”

Stanley noted at the time, “Many of (Trump’s) supporters see him as infallible. There’s the denial of reality that is characteristic of fascism.” Stanley continued, “Remember (Trump’s) comment, ‘I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and I wouldn’t lose a single supporter?’ That’s a fascist connection of total loyalty,” adding, “His rallies are classic fascist rallies.”

New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a frequent contributor to CNN Opinion and author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” sees Trump as part of a new breed of authoritarians like Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Ben-Ghiat told Time magazine in November 2020, “Strongmen are a subset of authoritarian who require total loyalty, bend democracy around (their) own needs.”

That demand for unquestioning loyalty to Trump helps us understand why a crowd in Pickens County, South Carolina, where Graham was born, and only 15 miles from where he now lives would so quickly turn on him. Those booing did not care that Graham has represented their state in the US House of Representatives, and then the US Senate, since 1995. All that matters is absolute loyalty to their beloved Trump.

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