Senator Lindsey Graham was met with loud boos at a rally for Trump over the holiday weekend, taking place not far from Graham’s own hometown. Come Wednesday morning, the “Morning Joe” almost pitied him for the “beyond sad and depressing” moment — but not quite.
The booing began on Saturday even before Graham took the stage, and largely persisted throughout his entire speech, save for a moment in which he asked the Trump crowd if they thought Trump “was a great president,” which earned the only cheers Graham got. When Trump himself took the stage, he did nothing to dissuade those boos, instead staying “I’m gonna get him straightened out.”
“It’s almost hard to watch at this point,” host Willie Geist said on Wednesday morning. “A man who just subjects himself again, and again, and again to this humiliation, and to defend Donald Trump and that’s what he gets in return for it.”
At that, Geist turned to former U.S. senator Claire McCaskill for her input, having worked directly with Graham in the past, and she agreed with Geist’s assertion that “humiliation seems like an understatement,” but noted that it’s a humiliation of his own making.
“If it wasn’t Lindsay’s own fault — it’s his fault, so I can’t feel sorry for him,” she said. “But he doesn’t appear ready or willing or capable of correcting this problem.”
That said, McCaskill offered some words of advice to the senator anyway.
“Lindsey, find yourself in this moment. Use this as a teaching moment,” she said. “You need to be Lindsey, not some embarrassing sycophant that has attached yourself like a leech to the side of this man — I would say, to the backside of this man — and it is just beyond sad and depressing.”
You can watch the full conversation from “Morning Joe” in the video above.
