Sen.Linsey Graham: “The kind of hate [the shooter] exhibited I’ve only seen in the Mideast”
This silly Senator thinks this kind of violence has never happened before in the United States. In what butt has this femme fatale senator kept his head in? He is ever seen this violence but in the Mideast. This is a senior US Senator of South Carolina, He succeeded Sen. Strom Thurmond, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history. Graham serves on the Senate Appropriations, Armed Services, Budget and Judiciary Committees. He has seen this kind of violence only in the middle East.
Graham doubled down when NBC’s Frank Thorp asked him about the comment after the senator left the floor. “The kind of hate that [the shooter] exhibited I've only seen in the Mideast,” he said. “It’s kind of that hard heart, that, you know, heart that has been hardened after generations of hate.”
Mid-East hate? Is there no antecedent for the type of white-on-black act of terror that occurred in Charleston last Tuesday? Did the senator forget about the nearly 4,000 lynchings that researchers have identified took place between 1877 and 1950? Did the Oklahoma City bombing, which took place well into Graham’s adult years, slip his mind?
Did Graham forget that the first anti-terror law in the United States, the Ku Klux Klan Act—also known as the Enforcement Act of 1871—was passed to combat white acts of terror against freed black southerners?
Also confusing is why the senator, when looking for a word to describe a mass shooting, looked toward a different region in the world. Mass shootings, as President Barack Obama noted in the immediate aftermath of the Charleston massacre, are all too common in the United States—much more so than in any developed country. The majority of those mass shootings—from Aurora to Sandy Hook to Tucson—sure seem to be committed by white males.
Graham’s offensive comment is the latest in what can charitably be described as an inconsistent response to the murders. “I just think he was one of these whacked-out kids,” Graham first said, noting that he did not believe racism was a primary motivating factor in the shooting. “I don’t think it’s anything broader than that. . . . It’s about a young man who is obviously twisted.”
He then attempted to clarify in an appearance on The View, but appeared to focus more heavily on the religion of the victims than their race: “This guy’s got tons of problems and to kill people in a church after sitting with them for an hour shows you, tells you how whacked out this kid is. . . . There are real people who are organized out there to kill people in religion and based on race, this guy’s just whacked out. But it’s 2015. There are people out there looking for Christians to kill them.”
As for the use of the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse? Graham was again caught off-guard when the political climate shifted around him. “It works here, that’s what the statehouse agreed to do,” Graham said last week. On Monday, he joined South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as she demanded the state legislature take up the issue of removing the flag from the grounds.
Lindsey Graham is a man who is running for president of the United States. If he wants to be a credible candidate, he should be able to form a reasonably coherent and consistent response to a mass killing that happened because an apparent racist walked into a church in the state Graham represents and picked off nine people on the sole basis of their skin color. He shouldn’t need to look to the Middle East for an explanation.
Kia Makarechi is VanityFair.com's news editor, covering politics, business, technology and culture. He lives in New York.
Comments