The Wrap
‘Morning Joe’ Skewers Lindsey Graham for Saying Judge in Jan. 6 Indictment ‘Hates Trump’: ‘So Embarrassing’
Dessi Gomez – August 4, 2023
“Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski slammed Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham for his words about former President Donald Trump’s latest indictment as well as the judge involved and the broader judicial system of the United States.
“It is so disgusting. Lindsey knows better. He obviously knows better, but he’s slandering the judge. He’s attacking the jury system and it’s very interesting. The judge, who’s gonna actually be overseeing the case, was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2013 by a vote of 95 to zero,” Scarborough said. “She was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. It’s just like the Republicans used to defend the FBI. They were the ones defending the FBI against attacks from progressives. The second the FBI actually investigated Donald Trump… well, suddenly they hate the FBI. Suddenly they hate the military. They hate military leaders. They slander the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. We can go on and on.”
Graham appeared on Fox News after Trump was arraigned Thursday.
“Any conviction in DC against Donald Trump is not legitimate. So they’re charging him with the crime of taking bad legal advice. That’s what this is about. They’re trying to criminalize the attorney-client relationship,” Graham said. “They’re trying to criminalize exercising of the First Amendment. The judge in this case hates Trump. You could convict Trump of kidnapping Lindbergh’s baby in DC. You need to have a change of venue. We need a new judge and we need to win in 2024 to stop this crazy crap.”
Brzezinski called the senator’s words “so embarrassing.”
“Lindsey Graham’s attacking the jury, we know and they know, the bedrock, the bedrock of our judicial system. ‘We the People,’ that’s how Madison had it set up. Our former party, from Election Day 2020 through January the 6th, trashed American democracy, told Americans and the world you can’t trust fair and free elections if our side doesn’t win,” Scarborough added. “Fox News paid like close to a billion dollars for the lies that they spread about the election and they’re gonna probably have to pay close to another billion dollars. We turn the page. What lesson is learned from that? Absolutely nothing. Because now they’re trashing the judicial system, which I would say is, it’s Madison’s crown jewel. It’s the great leveler of Madisonian democracy. But now they’re trashing that again, for Donald Trump.”
Scarborough then turned to Charlie Sykes, an American political commentator, to ask if he agreed with what Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum tweeted on X Thursday.
“If the Republican Party responds to the Trump indictment solely by attacking courts and judges, and if its leaders continue to work to de-legitimize the legal system, I am not sure how we recover.”