SC’s Clyburn says Trump’s election challenge ‘a coup’; Graham ‘lost grip on reality’
South Carolina’s most powerful Democrat called President Donald Trump’s claims that the election was “stolen” from him and his attempts to challenge its results “a coup.”
During a CNN appearance Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, called Trump’s work to change the results of the November election, which he lost to President-elect Joe Biden, “an attempt to overthrow our government.”
“He’s in your face trying to overthrow the will of the people,” said Clyburn, the third ranking Democrat in the U.S. House.
Clyburn also compared Trump to former Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who led his country to ally with Nazi Germany in World War II. The dictator lead his country for two decades until he was voted out of power by his own council and arrested in 1943. He was later installed by Hitler as a leader of German-occupied northern Italy and was killed after attempting to flee the country in 1945.
“But right here, on your network, I said three years ago that this man does not plan to give up this White House. (CNN’s) Don Lemon asked me if I’d compare him to Hitler. I said, ‘No, I’d compare him to Mussolini,’ ” Clyburn said Tuesday. “The night before he gave the State of the Union address in 2018, that’s what I said then because I saw it coming. And that’s what he’s doing here.”
Trump has spent the last month working to overturn the results of the election, calling for recounts in swing states that went for Biden like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. His legal team has issued several court challenges concerning the election, nearly all of which have failed. The president has also called leaders in several states, including Georgia, urging them to override the results of the election.
Despite counts, recounts and audits all showing a Biden win, Trump and several Republicans in Congress have refused to acknowledge the results of the election. A Washington Post survey revealed that just 27 of 249 Republicans in Congress acknowledge publicly that Biden is the president elect.
Clyburn admonished his Republican allies for not publicly accepting the election results and standing up to Trump.
“For my Republican colleagues not to speak up in defense of this democracy, the best thing going in the world today, to run the risk of losing this fragile democracy because of the idiosyncrasies of one person, that’s what I think is at stake here,” Clyburn said. “We should not allow anything akin to this to be taking place in this country.”
Clyburn focused his disapproval at fellow South Carolinian U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Graham appeared on Fox News Monday night, where he claimed a “civil war” was brewing in Georgia over the election results. The Peach State unexpectedly flipped blue for Biden in the days after election night thanks to a huge influx of mail-in ballots cast by Democrats.
During the appearance on Sean Hannity’s show, Graham, one of Trump’s staunchest and most enduring allies, continued to push Georgia officials to interfere with the election.
“It’s not unreasonable to ask the legislature to come back in and order an audit of the signatures in the presidential race to see if the system worked,” Graham said on Hannity. “What is unreasonable is to sit on your ass and do nothing when you’ve got a chance to save the country.”
Even if Trump were to be awarded Georgia, Biden would still have more than 270 electoral votes, the threshold for winning the presidency.
Graham’s consistent push back against the results in Georgia has landed him in trouble before. In mid-November, an ethics complaint was filed against the Seneca Republican after reports surfaced that he called the Georgia Secretary of State and allegedly asked if mail-in ballots in counties with a high rate of mismatched signatures could be thrown out. Graham has called those allegations “ridiculous.”
“Get a grip. Get a grip,” Clyburn said on CNN Tuesday. “I think he’s lost grip on reality.”
“I thought that I knew Lindsey Graham, but I must have been mistaken,” he added.
The Columbia Democrat did agree with Graham’s comment about a “civil war” brewing, though he added that “the result would be the same.”
“This country is not going to allow this kind of activity to take place,” Clyburn said.
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 1:16 PM.
