Lindsey Graham says God won’t care he voted to acquit Trump in Senate impeachment trial
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said he doesn’t think God will judge him for his vote to acquit President Donald Trump on a Fox News radio show Thursday.
Graham was responding to Sen. Mitt Romney’s lone Republican vote to convict the president in the Senate.
“All I can tell you is that God gave us free will and common sense,” Graham said. “I used the common sense God gave me to understand this was a bunch of B.S.”
Trump was acquitted on the two articles of impeachment brought against him Wednesday when neither received the necessary votes from two-thirds of senators. That means Trump won’t be removed from the White House and can remain in office through at least January 2021, when the winner of the November 2020 presidential election will take office.
Speaking to the Senate before the Wednesday vote, Romney said, “As a senator-juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential.”
A day later when the South Carolina senator called in to the Brian Kilmeade Show on Fox News, he said the effort to impeach Trump was “politically driven.”
Graham continued: “It was driven by people who are not looking for the truth, they hate Trump, they were gonna impeach him the day he got elected and if you can’t see through this, you know, your religion is clouding your thinking here.”
“When I go to meet God at the pearly gates I don’t think he’s going to ask me, ‘Why didn’t you convict Trump?’ I may be wrong but I don’t think that’s gonna be at the top of the list,” Graham said.
Romney, before the vote, said he knew there would be blow-back for voting against the president.
“I’m aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters I will be vehemently denounced. I’m sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters,” he said.
“Does anyone seriously believe that I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?” Romney said before the vote.
