THE CORRUPTION of LINDSEY GRAHAM: A CASE STUDY in the RISE of AUTHORITARIANISM (kindle) by William Saletan

 

















Winner of a 2024 Webby Award

The author of this short book (129 pages) makes it clear that he has no particular grudge against South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. Lindsey Graham serves as a stand-in for the Republican Party in general. He is a particularly good stand-in because he was there from the very beginning of the Donald Trump phenomenon because he was one of the many candidates for the 2016 Republican nomination. 

President Donald J. Trump and
Senator Lindsey Graham
Graham is also an amazingly frequent guest on the Sunday morning political talk shows, the evening shows on Fox, local TV, and talk radio. Graham loves to talk into microphones and because of that it is very easy to track his gradual moves from being a loudly outspoken opponent of Trump to the most vociferous defender of and apologist for the former president. 

Saletan thoroughly documents this transition and backs up each of these subtle changes with hundreds of actual links to videos, transcripts, and news articles. The reader can check for him/herself. I checked a ton of the links because there were so many ridiculous things that the 45th President has done and said that I simply forgotten about some of them.

This explains the idea behind
the book quite well.
This book is unlikely to change the minds of a MAGA friend of relative so don't even bother. But, if you are wondering how someone like Lindsey Graham could go from saying that Donald Trump was "hateful," a "demagogue," a "kook" and a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot" (page 8) to being his most prominent apologist, this book documents every baby step that Graham and the Republicans took to get there.

I rate this e-book 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE CORRUPTION of LINDSEY GRAHAM: A CASE STUDY in the RISE of AUTHORITARIANISM by William Saletan.

See my review of a that book has a similar theme but looks at several other Republicans in addition to Lindsey Graham: THANK YOUR for YOUR SERVITUDE: DONALD TRUMP'S WASHINGTON and the PRICE of SUBMISSION by Mark Leibovich.


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