“He is saying this one minute and that the next. It’s what he does that matters,” Graham told Fox News on Friday, noting that Trump is always under siege by his political opponents.
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Graham also compared the president not telling the truth about his alleged affairs with two women and the question of whether he paid them to stay silent with Bill Clinton’s affair, in which the latter claimed he did not have “sexual relations” with intern Monica Lewinsky in the White House.
“I voted against that article of impeachment because I think most people, blindsided, would lie to protect their family. Lying about sex wasn’t enough then for me, and it’s not enough now.”
Graham said that Trump is “like any other person” and recalled that he was the sole Republican to vote against that article of impeachment because he thought “the average person in that circumstance would be compelled to lie.”
“You don’t have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional Republic,” Graham said in a 1999 clip posted on Twitter by MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.
“Impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office,” Graham is heard saying.
In January 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 in October 2016, a month before the presidential election, to prevent her from discussing an affair she allegedly had with Trump in 2006.