If you need proof that even broken clocks are right twice a day, look no further than The View‘s discussion of Lindsey Graham’s death.
The ladies addressed the senator’s sudden passing and the online commentary that has surrounded it with surprising clarity. But it didn’t take long for it to come back to Trump, either.
Watch:
(Video Credit: The View)
“I knew him very well. He was a friend of mine for many years. Frankly, through John McCain, who was his best friend and his mentor for many years. First thing I want to say is, I saw a lot of posts online this week kind of celebrating his death and rejoicing,” said co-host Ana Navarro. “And listen, I know that Trump does that. He did it with Bob Mueller, he did it with John McCain, he did it with Rob Reiner. But it’s inhumane and lacking empathy. And the dead person is dead and can’t hear you and can’t read your posts. But his family, his sister who he adopted when she was 13 because both of their parents died, is alive, and is hearing it. And so I think that for the benefit, for humanity, for having, you know, a normal decency towards the family of the dead, that just has to stop.”
“The fact that Donald Trump is indecent doesn’t mean the rest of us have [be]. But as to Lindsey, for me, there was a Lindsey before Trump and a Lindsey after Trump. There were two completely different Lindseys. This brought out all sorts of feelings in me because, honestly, I feel like I buried Lindsey when John McCain died, because he became a completely different person. I get that people are brokenhearted. I’m brokenhearted,” she continued. “I get it that people are disappointed in him. I’m disappointed in him. I think for Lindsey, the Senate, his position, was his life. He really felt that making a difference was everything for him, and he was going to do anything that it took for him to continue getting elected and having influence. And that took sucking up to Trump. And it meant that he did keep getting re-elected and he did have influence on issues that he cared enormously about, like foreign policy. He was a staunch, unwavering supporter of Ukraine, of Israel, on freedom in the Western Hemisphere, in places like Cuba, like Venezuela, like Nicaragua. He was also so freaking funny. I know it’s a low bar, but he is the funniest politician I have ever, ever met. He was a son of the South, proud of being that, proud of his service in the military. I think his legacy is complicated. I think Lindsey was marked by having lost both of his parents very early in his life. He then adopted his sister, who was 13, so that she could get his military benefits. And I think that’s why he needed this kind of like big brother, mentor, kind of like father figure. McCain at first and then Trump.”
“He was certainly this political chameleon,” Sunny Hostin chimed in. “And his legacy is complicated, and people are speaking out about the very hypocrisy that you saw when he was John McCain’s friend and when he became friends with Donald Trump. Steve Schmidt, who’s a political strategist and worked on the John McCain campaign in 2008, wrote just today, ‘Lindsey knew better.'”
“And he said he was ‘a lonely and unprincipled man who betrayed his country for power and his decency for attention,'” she added, citing Schmidt. “That is someone that knew him. He also called him a ‘pilot fish, a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its deleterious, and that’s Lindsey.'”
“I’m going to echo Ana’s sentiments that the person who passed won’t hear the people’s comments. I’m more of the thought that he is no longer at play. I did not know him at all. I didn’t know really much about him. But it did disturb me that people were online saying things like, don’t humanize him. You don’t have to humanize a human. He was a human,” Sara Haines mused. “So there were people that loved him, there were people that cared for him. And whether I disagreed with him completely or not, he’s gone. So my heart goes out to the people around him that are suffering.”
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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.
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