The View’s Joy Behar wondered aloud on Tuesday morning whether Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) allegedly pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to find a way to toss out legal ballots because President Donald Trump “has something” on the South Carolina lawmaker.
As part of a concerted effort to reverse the president’s election loss, Trump has touted baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in Georgia while Republican lawmakers have blasted Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican himself, calling for his resignation and pressuring him to work to flip the state to Trump.
With the state currently in a hand recount, Raffensperger alleged that Graham questioned him about the state’s signature-matching law and whether poll workers’ political biases could have allowed them to accept ineligible ballots for President-elect Joe Biden. The secretary of state then claimed Graham seemingly asked him to throw out legal votes.
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“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Raffensperger told the Washington Post. Graham, meanwhile, has denied the secretary’s allegations, crying it was a “good conversation” and he was merely trying to find out how the state verifies mail-in ballot signatures.
Kicking off Tuesday’s broadcast of the ABC talk show with a discussion over this brewing controversy, The View’s resident liberal co-host immediately lashed out at the Republican senator.
“I don’t even understand why he would be motivated to do that,” she exclaimed. “It was after Election Day. Everyone knows that Georgia’s close, but it’s going to go to Biden. This number of votes he was talking about would not change that.”
The longtime View host, who has been a vocal critic of Graham since his sycophantic shift to Trump loyalist, then went right down a rabbit hole, suggesting Graham is doing Trump’s bidding because the president may have blackmail material on the conservative lawmaker.
“So what can we deduce from this?” Behar declared. “Lindsey Graham, Trump has something on him, some leverage, because he’s constantly talking about trying to help Trump. I do believe that Trump probably told him to do it because it serves his ego to hear he didn’t get that many votes, he got this many votes.”
“Also maybe Lindsey Graham wants to be in the election of 2024 and have his head on Mt. Rushmore also,” she added. “I don’t know what he’s up to, Lindsey. But, boy, if someone has fallen from grace harder than him, I really don’t know who that person is.”
Elsewhere in the segment, co-host Sunny Hostin—who is a lawyer—warned Graham that if Raffensperger’s accusations are true he may be in legal turmoil.
“He’s a lawyer. He knows better. He knows better,” she stated. “If what is alleged is true, that’s a crime. I think it has to be investigated. I think it has to be investigated by the Senate ethics committee. If it’s found to be true, I don’t think he should be the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He would have committed a crime.”
