Lindsey Graham’s final warning reveals something dark about Trump’s America

The lesson we damn well better learn from this disgraceful moment in American history is that millions and millions of Republicans will go along with ANY heinous thing -- poisoning our air, water and animals, incinerating our voting rights, employing masked men to slaughter and cage people, and the rape of our children -- just as long as it doesn't cost too much to gas up their clattering pickup trucks, and thirsty SUVs.

THAT is the deal-breaker for these people, and more than anything I can think of illustrates the decline in America, or maybe even more sadly, reveals what this country has always been about at its cold, diseased heart.

The past 20 months have been the most debilitating, evil and regressive stretch in American history. Slow, incremental progress through the years on massively important things like protecting the environment, the sciences, and human rights, women’s rights, and voting rights have not only come to a screeching halt, but have been slammed in reverse by the ugliest, most dangerous political party this country has ever seen.

We have a president who by words and actions is closer to Adolph Hitler in character than even Richard Nixon. This is the racist who urged a violent attack on America, and then sat back, watched it unfold, and did nothing for three hours but root for its success.

So heinous was January 6, 2021, attack that even the late Senator Lindsey Graham and seen enough, and said this on the Senate floor that night:

" Trump and I, we've had a hell of a journey. I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he's been a consequential President, but today (is the) first thing you'll see. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough."

Of course, it turns out Graham never meant a single thing he said, and was a profile in cowardice ….

We simply must do everything we can to douse this fascist bonfire fast, or we will all be incinerated by it, because thanks to people like Graham I promise you this: Other heinous people like JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and Vladimir Putin are both giving orders and taking notes, and will only continue to fine tune the poison they are so eagerly pumping into the Republican Party’s veins.

Make no mistake about it: Their aim is to end us, and make sure our Democracy, like the history they are busy erasing, is also wiped away forever in America. They do not believe for a minute that all men and women were created equal, and this is beyond dispute at this point.

Frankly, we are lucky our end hasn’t already arrived. We still have a chance of preserving what thousands have died for on battlefields all over the world for the past 150 years or so.

The truth of the past decade is this: If Trump was just a tad more subtle dealing out his evil on behalf of the billionaires, oligarchs and fascists who own him, our country would have fallen six years ago at the voting booth, and not on any battlefield or attack on our Capitol.

It can be reasonably argued that if Trump hadn’t encouraged people to drink bleach, while completely mangling the response to the once-in-a-century pandemic that killed millions, and instead handled that crisis with even a minimum of competence, he would have won in a landslide in 2020. He then would have immediately proceeded to do all the awful things he is doing now with the crystal-clear intent of never relinquishing a presidency he values only to pad his insatiable ego and bulging bank accounts.

People forget that at the time of the outbreak Trump’s approval rating had risen to 49%, because no matter how incompetently he handled his presidency up until that point many people needed to believe he could succeed in protecting us from the deadly pandemic.

And before you pooh-pooh a 49% approval rating, consider that number is actually sky-high when compared to other presidencies the past half-century during similar times of their presidencies.

Joe Biden was between 36% and 40% during the same juncture of his presidency in 2024.

Instead, the heartless, cruel Trump didn’t have what it takes to govern through a crisis and proved as always he is far better at starting them. Just enough Americans in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona decided they had at least temporarily seen enough of him, and ushered Biden into office.

It was that close.

America was given a four-year stay of execution, and squandered it when it refused to kill the beast. Instead of making sure he could never run for office again just enough Republicans led by the repulsive Graham gave him life. Instead of bringing what was left of the full weight of the law atop him, Attorney General Merrick Garland dithered until Democrats had to belatedly call him out of hiding with their January 6th Committee.

By that time, it was clear Trump had somehow survived, and would be around to haunt us the next election. The leadership of the Democratic Party had underestimated how sick America still was, while overestimating their popularity when the 2022 midterms weren't near as fatal as had been forecasted.

By 2024, Biden and that 39 percent approval rating were atop a ticket that had run out of juice, and were unable to connect with the slim majority of the sane people left in America.

What followed was a continuation of the beginning of the end …

My old stomping grounds of Madison, Wisconsin, was labeled “77 square miles surrounded by reality” by a frustrated and constipated Republican governor Lee Sherman Dreyfus 40 years ago. Madison is a liberal bastion of real truths and real justice. People are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. But if you venture outside that liberal square even today you will see endless farms with billboard-sized signs with TRUMP on them.

Trump has done nothing for the farmers, of course, but he hates who they do, so they are plenty appeased.

America is on life support right now, and that is the reality.

Trump is still doling out variants of that bleach, but this time it’s not because he thinks it can help anybody, but because he hopes it hurts them.

Here in my new state of North Carolina, our former governor, Roy Cooper, is running to flip a crucial Senate seat in November with the simple slogan: “Make stuff cost less.”

It’s not that Cooper doesn’t know full well how sick the American electorate is and how obscene it is that an entire political party has fallen at the fat, little feet of a traitor, it’s that he knows that to win in a purple state like this one, talking about affordability is the best way to pull over just enough Right-leaning votes to prevail.

More North Carolinians are worried about the price of gas than they are the attacks on life-saving vaccines and the air and water we breathe, which makes the state a microcosm of our sickly country.

So maybe Cooper and the Democrats will have the big election day in November that I believe they will. And maybe, just maybe, our Supreme Court won’t throw out those elections for the benefits of themselves, and their king’s Republicans ...

Maybe the sane, caring people in America will have bought ourselves a little more time to regroup, and have some semblance of power to curtail the nonstop assault on our country.

Maybe we should take some absurd solace in the fact that had the incompetent Trump kept those gas prices low, everything we are still fighting for this November would have already been gone by now.

Maybe people will finally stop pretending that these lifeless Republicans give a single damn about this country, when it is so bloody obvious that the things they really value can easily be found by looking at the prices at the gas pump.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)