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Twitter Grills Lindsey Graham For Reversing Position On Trump’s Tariffs Against Mexico

BY May 31, 2019

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday evening his intention to impose trade tariffs on Mexico unless that country addressed immigration in a different way — and his favorite lawmaker in the Senate was ever-so-quick to support them, too, despite opposing similar proposals made by the president just two years ago.

Photo by Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images

Trump vowed to impose a 5 percent tariff on Mexico “until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP,” he wrote in a pair of tweets. He also promised to raise those tariffs incrementally as time went by if Mexico didn’t respond to them.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) sent out a few tweets of his own on Thursday, shortly after Trump’s tweets were made, backing up the president’s message.

“I support President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Mexico until they up their game to help us with our border disaster,” Graham wrote.

Graham, who has been an ardent supporter of Trump for some time now, wasn’t always of the mind that tariffs should be used, however. In fact, when Trump had proposed the same thing during the first month of his presidency, Graham took a hard stance against tariffs imposed on our southern border neighbor.

“Border security yes, tariffs no,” Graham wrote back then, according to a report from Raw Story. “Mexico is 3rd largest trading partner. Any tariff we can levy they can levy. Huge barrier to econ growth.”

Twitter users were fast to note the hypocrisy in Graham’s comments from before to today. Some questioned what had happened to him in the interim, why he changed his mind, and whether his late friend John McCain would approve of the sudden change and support of a president he had been frequently at odds with.

Others were more critical of Graham’s choice, offering sarcastic surprise reactions and other observations about the senator’s change in behavior. They also questioned to what end would Graham be willing to change his views in order to placate the president in the years ahead.

Some users also noted that Graham faces a stronger challenge to his Senate seat in 2020, when he’s up for re-election. As reported earlier this week by HillReporter.com, Jaime Harrison, Associate Chair at the Democratic National Committee, announced his candidacy to run against Graham in the next election.

Harrison’s announcement was met with a stunning reaction from donors, as he was able to rack up more than a quarter of a million dollars within the first 24 hours of announcing his run. “And our average contribution is only $29!” Harrison added in a tweet announcing his successes so far.

 



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