Lindsey Graham Brags About How Trump Turned Republicans Into a Cult

MAGA Republicans are teaching a scary lesson in the wake of Senator Bill Cassidy’s weekend primary loss: Do not cross Donald Trump.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham appeared on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday to spread the word.

“Are you glad that Senator Cassidy is no longer going to be your colleague, senator?” asked host Kristen Welker.

“No, I like Bill. I thought he was a great senator, but he made a political decision,” Graham said.

Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial—a decision that, even five years on, has earned him the ire of his MAGA-aligned peers. Graham said Cassidy’s actions would have “ruined” Trump’s “political life” and kept him from ever “running for office again.”

Graham also threw shade at Representative Thomas Massie, another Trump dissenter whose primary is coming up on Tuesday, whining that the Kentucky Republican “votes against Trump all the time.”

“What’s the headline? ‘Trump strong,’” Graham said. “Those who try to destroy Trump politically—stand in the way of his agenda—are going to lose.”

“Bill made a decision. What would LBJ do?” the South Carolinian continued, referring to former President Lyndon B. Johnson. “Is it natural for a politician to go after people who try to destroy their political life? So, Bill Cassidy lost because he tried to destroy Trump. Massie is gonna lose because he’s trying to destroy the agenda.

“You can disagree with President Trump, but if you try to destroy him you’re going to lose, because this is the party of Donald Trump,” Graham concluded.

Cassidy was first elected in 2008 to represent Louisiana’s 6th congressional district, a thin, backslash-shaped region that spans from Shreveport in the northwest to Baton Rouge in the heart of Louisiana. The incumbent senator finished third in the district’s Republican primary on Saturday, officially pushing him out of the running. The remaining two candidates—including a Trump-endorsed state representative, Julia Letlow—are headed to a runoff in June.

A CSPAN caller who identified himself as a three-time Donald Trump voter compared the president to Adolf Hitler.

In a damning pulse-check on Trump’s second term, a caller, who identified himself as “Thomas from Hawaii,” told CSPAN’s Washington Journal Saturday that he regrets supporting Trump after realizing he was “the worst president we’ve ever had.”

“It’s hard for me to say this, but I think if I can open up about it in public that it might help others,” Thomas said. “I wanted to believe Trump was the real deal for a long time, even though I had doubts because I knew enough about his business history to think otherwise. But now I regret my support for him, and I should’ve known better. He’s making it plain as day.”

“He’s a con man, a liar, doesn’t keep his promises. He’s in office all for himself and he doesn’t even try to hide his corruption anymore.”

The caller added: “He’s the worst president we’ve ever had and he’s the most corrupt president we’ve ever had. I know it’s hard, it took me a while to be able to say that. Very difficult when you commit yourself to believing in somebody.”

Washington Journal host Taylor Popielarz asked what had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Thomas replied it wasn’t any one thing. “He was gonna lower prices on day one, he was gonna do this on day one, only he could fix all this stuff,” he said. “And now I understand how somebody like Adolf Hitler was able to brainwash millions of people. I never thought I’d see that again in my lifetime. But it’s happened, right? I thought we got past that, but we don’t learn from history.”

Thomas isn’t alone in his concerns.

In a recent CBS News/YouGov poll, seven in 10 Americans said that they were either “angry” or “frustrated” with Trump’s economic approach. A New York Times/Siena poll found that Trump’s approval rating has sunk to a second-term low of 37 percent amid his deeply unpopular war with Iran, which has sent the price of energy skyrocketing.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly report, released last week, found that inflation rose to 3.8 percent in April, outpacing wages, which grew at a rate of 3.6 percent. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to tout cherry-picked data to show dropping prices.

President Trump capped off a long weekend of boomer-AI shitposting on Truth Social with a bizarre picture of him walking next to a handcuffed alien.

The Sunday afternoon post, made without comment, is perhaps his strangest since he posted himself as AI Jesus. And its timing makes no sense given the right-wing conspiracy theorist chatter that surrounded his recent promise to release the “UFO files.”

Our president also posted AI images of him sitting menacingly in some kind of Star Trek spaceship pressing a giant red button while explosions surround him.

In addition to the science fiction, Trump posted some AI images attacking his political rivals. There’s House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a huge chain and throwing money around while superimposed over a war zone with the caption “Hakeem ‘low IQ’ Jeffries in his district.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi and former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden can be seen relaxing in sludge in the reflecting pool with the caption “Dumacrats love sewage.” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Governor and future presidential candidate J.B. Pritzker are depicted as drooling, bumbling oafs with a “Dumb and Dumber: The Illinois Government” caption. And California Governor and likely 2028 candidate Gavin Newsom was made into a zombie on a California license plate.

The president is just as susceptible to AI as your average reel-scrolling American, and he’s using it to his heart’s content. One can only imagine the prompts entered and the conversations that go into the decision to post. It’s tacky, sad, and reeks of mental ineptitude. The Democratic attacks are par for the course, but who is the sci-fi for? Just wait until he finds out about AI food.

Less than one-third of Americans think President Trump’s war with Iran was a good idea.

A new poll from The New York Times and Siena University shows Trump’s decision to go to war has hurt his popularity, with his approval rating falling to a second-term low of just 37 percent. Most of the respondents said that the war was not worth the money spent on it, and do not have confidence that the economy will improve.

Across the board, voters disapprove of everything Trump is doing by majorities approaching 60 percent, according to the poll. About 59 percent of them disapprove of how he is handling his job as president, and 56 percent disapprove of how he’s handling immigration. 64 percent don’t approve of what he’s doing with the economy.

Trump is losing more independent voters by the day. In January, an earlier Times and Siena poll found 62 percent of independents didn’t approve of his job performance. This latest poll shows that number has increased to 69 percent. These voters will be critical in the coming midterm elections, threatening the Republican Party’s control of Congress.

The president and his party know this, but instead of changing course, they are seeking to aggressively gerrymander their districts ahead of November, giving them several new opportunities in Republican-led states and disenfranchising Black voters across the South. According to the poll, Democrats have a 10 percent advantage with all registered voters, and an 18 percent advantage with independents. Can that, coupled with Trump’s unpopularity, still give the party control of Congress?

President Trump promised to bring 500,000 Chinese students to American universities and allow China to own U.S. farmland—leaving the MAGAverse enraged. 

“But if you don’t have those students—good students, by the way—if you don’t … if they’re good and they want to stay in America, we won’t give them a green card and things like that,” Trump rambled on to Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Friday. “Frankly, I think that it’s good that people come from other countries and they learn our culture, and many of them want to stay here. I think it’s a good thing. Not everybody agrees with me, and it doesn’t sound like a very conservative position. And I’m as conservative—I’m a conservative guy. I’m really a common sense guy, I think, more than a conservative.” 

“People would argue they worry about whether they have nefarious intentions,” Hannity said.

“Sure, I know, and we worry about that, and honestly, you know, they do things to us, and we do things to them. It’s a very fine line, the whole thing with students,” Trump replied. 

This triggered a meltdown in MAGA’s considerable Sinophobic wing. “I respect President Trump, but if he brings 500,000 Chinese students to Florida colleges, I will raise tuition on them to $1,000,000/year,” Florida’s racist, groyper gubernatorial candidate James Fishback wrote. “As Governor, I refuse to let the  limited admission spots at our taxpayer-funded colleges be stolen by foreigners.”

“Actually, no, those 500,000 students are by law required to act as spies for China. This is the law in China. If removing them sinks some schools, then they deserve to sink,” MAGA influencer Robby Starbuck opined. “The only Chinese students we should invite are the top 0.001% who we should invite to defect to America. And farmland? Lol. We shouldn’t even let a Chinese company visit American farmland let alone own it. No exceptions. I give the Chinese credit, they would NEVER let Americans own their farmland. America First.”

“Trump says it’s insulting to tell China their students can’t go to our universities, imagine being an American student and receiving a rejection letter while 500,000 Chinese students get in!” former MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote. “And NO it is not ok for China to buy our farmland!!! And no that’s not common sense!!!”

It certainly makes sense for MAGA to be confused. Letting in hundreds of thousands of international students from the same country our leaders claim to be in a deep political rivalry with is not very “America First” of the president.