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Leaked Audio Shows Lindsey Graham Praising Biden Before Inauguration

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham was heard of tapes praising President Joe Biden during the incident at the Capitol last year.

In the tapes obtained by CNN Graham is heard praising the incoming president as he was in a secure location.

“’We will actually come out of this thing stronger. Moments like this reset,” he said in the audio aired by reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.

“It’ll take a while. People will calm down. People will [say] ‘I don’t want to be associated with that.’ This is a group within a group. What this does, it’ll be a rallying effect for a while, where the country says, ‘We’re better than this,’” the South Carolina senator said.

Then he spoke about Biden, believing he would be a unifier for the nation.

“He’ll be maybe the best person to have, right? I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?” he said.

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The audio is talked about in a coming book penned by the two New York Times authors.

“You can almost hear his voice, Senator Graham, trying to play out what the impact of this attack, which as we talked was still ongoing as we spoke that afternoon on the 6th,” Martin said on “Anderson Cooper 360” on Tuesday.

“The Capitol police were still trying to clear the Capitol in those moments, Graham is thinking ahead, he is thinking about the political impact on his party and the impact on the country,” he said.

But the author said that President Biden has failed at being a unifier

“It, in fact, deepened the partisan divisions,” Martin said. “[Biden] is sort of one more partisan actor in the political scene in this tribal moment we’re living through in this country,” he said.

It comes after these same authors played similar audio of House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy attacking former President trump in the days after the incident.

The New York Times reported that the House GOP leader had considered calling on Trump to resign which led to McCarthy’s office issuing a blanket denial. But then, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow played an audio recording Thursday evening which led to doubts about the veracity of the California Republican’s claim.

“My gut tells me no,” McCarthy reportedly said during a private call with other GOP members in response to Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyoming) question about whether Trump would resign, according to audio aired on MSNBC. “I am seriously thinking about having that conversation with him tonight. I haven’t talked to him in a couple of days. From what I know of him, I mean you guys all know him, too, do you think he’d ever back away?

“We know it’ll pass the House, I think there’s a chance it’ll pass the Senate even when he’s gone. And I think there are a lot of different ramifications for that. … The only discussion I would have with him is I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation that he should resign,” McCarthy added in reference to an impeachment referral.

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“That would be my take, but I don’t think he would take it,” McCarthy said. “But I don’t know.”

But the relationship between the former president and McCarthy has stayed strong.

The former president was said to not be furious, as many assumed he would be, with the minority leader after revelations that McCarthy talked negatively about him in private after the incident at the Capitol, The Washington Post reported.

McCarthy phoned Trump on Thursday night to discuss the revelations on the audio recordings and, according to three people with knowledge of the conversation, the former president assured him that everything was good between them.

In fact, The Post said, the sources said that Trump was “glad McCarthy didn’t follow through” with asking him to resign.

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McCarthy spoke about the revelations on the audio recordings on Friday night.

“I’ve never asked the president to resign,” he said to reporters.

“I’ve never asked the president to resign, and I never thought he should resign. What I was asked on a phone call was about the process, the 25th amendment, if someone is impeached. We walked through ‘ifs, ands or buts.’ It was never in the process to ask President Trump to resign and especially after we learned Nancy Pelosi denied the national guard to be there to protect us all,” he said.

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