Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) offered a mild objection to President Donald Trump’s decision to gut her late brother’s Russia sanctions law. Critics say that wasn’t nearly enough.
Graham was appointed in July to finish the term of her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Trump has endorsed her to keep the seat. She talked about the waiver with South Carolina reporters on Saturday, a day after Trump put on hold the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act. Her brother had spent more than a year lining up votes for it before he died.
“Personally, I would choose to put the pressure on Russia to end the war and get gas prices down,” Graham said, according to The New York Times. “Because I don’t trust Putin, and I don’t trust Russia.”
But she stopped short of criticizing Trump directly. She said she’d raise the issue with him next week, when he’s scheduled to rally for her in South Carolina, and noted that her brother and the president “had that relationship where they could agree to disagree sometimes.”
Video of the exchange spread on X, and the reaction was harsh.
“This is sad. Dare one say pathetic,” wrote Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of The Bulwark and a longtime conservative commentator.
The anti-Trump group Republicans Against Trump called it “beyond pathetic.”
Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, called it “absolutely pathetic.”
Jaime Harrison, the former Democratic National Committee chair who ran against Lindsey Graham in 2020, summed it up in one word: “#Weak.”
Grant Stern, executive editor of Occupy Democrats, said Trump had handed Graham’s opponents an opening.
“If Darline Graham was looking for the most effective way to show voters she’s totally ineffective, then Trump just handed it to her,” he wrote.
Activist and author Amy Siskind, creator of The Weekly List, wondered whether it could put the seat in play.
“Wouldn’t it be fun if Trump turned on her, and we got to win this South Carolina Senate seat,” she wrote. “It’s definitely not out of the realm of possibilities.”
The veterans advocacy group Veterans For Responsible Leadership said Trump “spits on her brother’s grave” and that her only response was to keep cozying up to him.
Graham faces Democrat Annie Andrews and Libertarian Kasie Whitener in November. She has called passing her brother’s law one of her proudest accomplishments, saying in a debate this week that it “gives the president tools he can use if he so chooses to end the war through economic sanctions.”
Trump chose not to use them.