Lindsey Graham informed the voting public on Thursday that they shouldn’t support his 2016 bid if they’re not big fans of embroiling the country in war—because if he’s in the White House, more war is definitely happening.
“It’s a tough message,” Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy cautioned him. “A lot of people are just worn out by war.”
“Well, don’t vote for me,” Graham shot back. “Don’t vote for me, because I’m telling you what’s coming: Barack Obama’s policies of leading from behind are going to allow another 9/11.”
“The only way I know to defend this country is to send some of us back to Iraq and eventually to Syria to dig these guys out of the ground, destroy the caliphate, kill as many of them as you can, hold territory, and help people over there help themselves.”
Graham’s messaging here is questionable, given that a 2014 Reason-Rupe survey found that only 14 percent of Americans think the Iraq war reduced the threat of terrorism. An NBC/WSJ/Annenberg poll the same year found that 71 percent of Americans now say the Iraq war “wasn’t worth it”—including 44 percent of Republicans.
Jeb Bush, when pressed on whether he would have authorized the war given what he knows now, initially said he would, but later backtracked and claimed he hadn’t understood the question.
“If we’re all supposed to answer hypothetical questions, knowing what we know now, I would not have engaged,” he said eventually.
Watch the clip at Mediaite.
