CNN’s Avlon Mocks Lindsey Graham’s Defense of ‘Incoherent’ Trump: It’s ‘Stop Beating Up on the Baby!’

CNN’s John Avlon ridiculed Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Thursday for how his defense of President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal has shifted amid recent developments.

As New Day talked about how Graham has run defense for the president’s endeavors with Ukraine, the panel remarked on how he recently said he would refuse to acknowledge the testimony of the impeachment inquiry’s witnesses, and also his view that the Trump administration was too “incoherent” to set up a quid pro quo. Avlon found this to be an interesting argument, saying it follows a pattern of how Trump’s defenders are sometimes forced to defend the president’s controversies by saying he was too politically incompetent to know what he was doing.

“This is the descent of man being acted out by Lindsey Graham. A few weeks ago, it was ‘if there is any objective evidence of quid pro quo, I’d be real concerned.’ Now we have, basically, consensus evidence of quid pro quo, and instead, Lindsey Graham is saying I’m not going to read the transcripts, a literal know-nothing position as opposed to confronting the facts. What I love about this is it’s the perfect encapsulation of what a lot of the last line of Donald Trump’s defense is, which is, he’s incompetent, he’s a large malevolent child, you can’t hold him to the same standards as other humans, let alone presidents, so there’s no way they could have executed this. Stop beating up on the baby! This is the argument one of his staunchest defenders in the Senate is making. And it’s nuts.”

Watch above, via CNN.

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