Sen. Graham vows $500K to Trump campaign as election results wind down, legal challenges ramp up
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Weeks after going on Fox News to beg for campaign cash, the suddenly flush South Carolina senator has money to burn.
“I’m here tonight to stand with Donald Trump, he stood with me," the recently re-elected Republican told Fox’s Sean Hannity. “I’m going to donate $500,000 tonight to President Trump’s defense legal fund.”
Trailing in the ballot count, the president is hoping the courts will keep in power. Graham’s contribution to that endeavor will likely come from the campaign account, according to The Hill.
The president, without evidence, insists widespread voter fraud is costing him the election, where he trails Democrat Joe Biden by more than four-million ballots. Graham, also citing no proof, followed the president’s lead, telling Hannity “the allegations of wrongdoing are earth-shattering.”
Graham also referred to the 2020 election as “The campaign President Trump won.”
The 65-year-old statesman made multiple visits to Fox News in the weeks leading to the election, repeating his website address and begging voters not to let his Democratic opponent boot him out of the senate seat he’s held since 2003.
“I’m being killed financially,” Graham told Fox & Friends in late September. “This money is 'cause they hate my guts.”
He made a similar solicitation on “Hannity.”
“I’m getting overwhelmed,” Graham later pleaded on that prime time program. "Help me, they’re killing me money wise, help me.
Graham’s campaign pulled in a whopping $15 million in the first two weeks of October. He has a month to report how much money he brought in and where it came from at the end of his successful fourth senate run. On Thursday, Graham thanked Hannity, saying “You’ve raised a ton of money for me.”
A one-time critic of the president, Graham has become one of Trump’s most loyal allies since the 2016 election.
In 2015, he called Trump a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot” and urged voters to tell the former reality TV star to “go to hell.”
After the RNC convention in August, Graham praised the president for his “unapologetic view of America.”
Graham also used his chat with Hannity to blast pollsters, who showed him in a virtual tie with Jaime Harrison in his senate race. Graham, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, is leading that race by double digits.
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