Sen. Lindsey Graham defended President Donald Trump’s mocking of Christine Blasey Ford, arguing that it was less degrading than how some Democrats responded to accusations against Bill Clinton.
During an interview at The Atlantic Forum Wednesday, the South Carolina Republican said that everything Trump said while mocking Ford at a rally in Mississippi on Tuesday was “factual.”
“Everything he said is factual,” Graham said. “He’s frustrated his nominee has been treated so badly.”
Pressed by the interviewer, who called Trump’s remarks a “personal, degrading attack,” Graham then quoted a line infamously used by Clinton adviser James Carville about Paula Jones, who accused Clinton of sexual harassment as governor of Arkansas: “Drag a hundred dollars through a trailer park and there’s no telling what you’ll find,” Carville said in 1997.
“You know what’s personally degrading?” Graham responded. “‘This is what you get when you go through a trailer park with a $100 bill.’ This is not the first time this has happened.”
Read More: Susan Collins Criticizes Trump’s Mocking of Christine Blasey Ford
Graham said he did not approve of Trump’s comments on Tuesday, but that it could have been worse.
“Sometimes people are accused of something they didn’t do,” Graham said. “So President Trump went through a factual rendition that I didn’t particularly like and I would tell him to ‘Knock it off, you’re not helping’ but it can be worse — you can kill someone’s cat and puncture their tires to get them to shut up.”
The interviewer asked if he Graham saying people should be thankful Trump didn’t say something more offensive.
“The point is we’ve come a long way since 1990,” he said. “Whether you like it or not, I really don’t care. I’ve seen what happened to these women in 1990 when they came forward. I don’t like what the president said last night, I’m the first person to say I want to hear it from Dr. Ford , i thought she was handled respectfully, I thought Kavanaugh was treated like crap.”
