Democrats are ostensibly the party of gay rights, yet that isn’t stopping many Democratic lawmakers from launching a whisper campaign about Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sexuality.
Many have begun publicly suggesting that Sen. Graham’s support of the Trump Administration is the result of blackmail.
Things got started after the chair of a Democratic super PAC, Jon Cooper, flat-out accused Sen. Graham of being blackmailed over “some pretty serious sexual kink”:
On Tuesday, Islamic activist Qasim Rashid posted a clip of Sen. Graham calling Trump in 2015 a “religious bigot” and wrote atop his post, “I can’t even imagine what they have on Graham.”
Freshman lawmaker Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted in response: “They got him, he is so compromised!”
Rep. Omar appeared this morning on CNN, where she doubled down on the claim Trump is blackmailing Graham over his supposed homosexuality. “A lot of Americans agree with me,” she claimed.
“Over the last three years, we have seen many times where senator Lindsey Graham has told us how dangerous this president could be if he was given the opportunity to be in the white House. And all of a sudden he has made not only 180 turn around, but a 360 turn around,” she said. “My tweet was just an opinion based on what I believe to be visible to me And I’m pretty sure there are lots of Americans who agree on this.”
Meanwhile, on MSNBC, anchor Stephanie Ruhle made the same claim. During a panel on the same day as Rashid’s tweet, Graham’s 2015 “bigot” comment was brought up. Former Republican David Jolly said Graham apparently has a “change of heart.”
Or, Ruhle said, “Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham.”
“Pretty extreme”? The idea, of course, was to let viewers’ imaginations take over from there. Ruhle is not the only MSNBC host to traffic in anti-gay rumor-mongering about Graham. On a now-defunct blog, her colleague Joy Ann Reid repeatedly referred to Graham as “Miss Lindsey.” (She also accused Karl Rove, then-Republican Charlie Crist, and the son of Chief Justice Roberts of being gay.)
Other left-wing personalities have been more explicit. Comedienne Chelsea Handler suggested Trump has a “d*ck sucking video” of the South Carolina senator.
In response to these rumors, Graham has previously told The New York Times, “I ain’t gay.”
Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments below.
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