ROAD TO 2016
Lindsey Graham
Age: 60, July 9, 1955 (age 60), Central, SC
Political party: Republican
Political experience: Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, 3rd Congressional District, South Carolina, in 1994. Elected to the United States Senate in 2002 and was re-elected in 2008 and 2014. Serves on the Senate Budget, Judiciary, Armed Services and Appropriations committees.
Professional: Six and a half years, United States Air Force active duty as an Air Force lawyer.
Education: Earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of South Carolina
Family: Single
Interesting factoid: Adopted younger sister after his parents died.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina may be the ultimate Washington insider in the Republican race for president — having spent more a third of his life in Congress.
Graham, who was first elected to Congress in 1994, is hoping to build a broad base on one positive aspect of those years of experience: his command of foreign policy. But so far that’s not showing up in the polls.
When he formally his candidacy in June, the South Carolina Republican said: “I’ve got one simple message:I have more experience with our national security than any other candidate in this race. That includes you, Hillary.”
Graham is considered one of the country’s most vocal hawks and is a close ally of 2008 Republican nominee John McCain. Graham’s campaign theme is ‘security through strength,’ also the name of his political action committee.
With his election in 1994, Graham became the first Republican since 1877 to serve in the U.S. House from South Carolina’s Third Congressional District. He served four terms in the House before running in 2002 to replace retiring eight-term Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond. He was re-elected to the Senate in 2008 and 2014.
Before he became a creature of Washington, Graham had a compelling personal story, growing up poor in the backroom of his parents’ bar/pool hall.
He took on the job of raising his young sister while in college and eventually adopted her after their parents died. Graham, who never married, was an Air Force lawyer. He now the senior senator from South Carolina.
Last Wednesday, he was relegated to the earliest of the two debates — that’s where you land when CNN concludes you’re averaging 1 percent or under in the polls.
But Graham, a well-known quipster, was credited with livening up the show at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif..
A one point, he proposed more bipartisan cooperation in Washington through social interactions.
“That’s the first thing I’m going to do as president — we’re going to drink more,” he said to laughter.
Graham’s statements have hit the Truth-O-Meter 12 times, earning two each True, Mostly True, Mostly False and False ratings and four Half True ratings. He had no statements with PolitiFact’s lowest rating Pants on Fire.
Below is a sampling of those checks. A summary of all Lindsey Graham fact-checks are at http://www.politifact.com/personalities/lindsey-graham/
Lindsey Graham on Sunday, August 31, 2008 in an interview on ABC News “This Week”
Joe Biden “voted against the first Gulf War. He opposed the surge. He wanted to partition Iraq.”
John McCain’s 2008 campaign readily acknowledged Joe Biden’s expertise in national security matters. But that didn’t stopping McCain surrogates from questioning the Democratic vice presidential nominee’s judgment, especially when it comes to Iraq policy.
McCain ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., raised the issue in an Aug. 31, 2008, interview on ABC News’ This Week, implying that Biden lacked the backbone to stand up to powerful foes or to fix broken governments.
“He has national security experience. But experience and judgment need to come together. He voted against the first Gulf War. He opposed the surge. He wanted to partition Iraq,” Graham said in response to a statement about Biden’s national security experience.
On the campaign trail, Biden makes the case that he has the requisite toughness to go head-to-head with foreign leaders. As an example, he points to a 1993 encounter with Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic during the Balkan wars in which he called Milosevic a war criminal to his face. But Biden’s two votes on the eve of war in 1991 clearly show he favored continued economic sanctions over the use of military force.
We ruled Graham’s statement True.
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Lindsey Graham on Sunday, July 27th, 2014 in comments on CNN’s “State of the Union”
Russia “has an economy the size of Italy.”
While the fighting in Ukraine stirs memories of the Cold War, there’s little appetite in the United States to get into a military showdown with Russia. Where’s there’s bipartisan support is to get Europe to take stronger stand.
Sen. Graham said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday that President Barack Obama should be getting the European Union nations into line.
“They’re dysfunctional political organization, Europe is,” Graham said. “And without American leadership organizing Europe and the world, you see people like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, who has an economy the size of Italy — he’s playing a poker game with a pair of 2s and winning.”
Really? Russia is the world’s second-largest producer of natural gas and the third-largest producer of oil, and it has an economy the size of Italy?
In terms of nominal GDP, Graham is correct. But if you run the numbers a different way and measure purchasing power parity, Russia’s economy is larger than Italy’s.
Graham’s statement is accurate but needs additional information.
We rated his claim Mostly True.
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Lindsey Graham on Sunday, October 5th, 2014 in comments on CNN’s “State of the Union
Under sequestration, the military was cut “down to the smallest Army since 1940, the smallest Navy since 1915.”
The United States has upped its operations in Iraq and Syria, but Graham says the military is shrinking.
On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning, Graham criticized President Barack Obama for what he said are “half-measures” in thwarting terrorist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
“We’re cutting the CDC’s budget, the NIH budget. We’re taking the military budget under sequestration cuts down to the smallest Army since 1940, the smallest Navy since 1915. We’re destroying the Intelligence Committee.”
There’s a lot in there, but the idea that the U.S. military — by far the largest in the world in terms of spending — is as small as it was nearly a century ago caught our attention.
Graham was counting the number of ground troops in the Army and the number of ships in the Navy. He’s got the numbers right, but it’s not a fair comparison because technology and capabilities have grown so much in the past century. The Army and Navy of today are much more capable than they were decades ago, even with fewer soldiers and ships. A better comparison is to look at how the U.S. military stands up relative to other nations.
Graham’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details and takes things out of context, so we rated it Half True.
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Lindsey Graham on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2015 in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper
The USA Freedom Act undercuts privacy because “the phone records will be in the hands of the phone companies with hundreds of people available to look at the records, versus 20 or 30 people in the government.”
The Senate passed the U.S.A. Freedom Act, which affects the National Security Agency’s bulk phone data collection program, June 2, 2015.
Soon, the government will no longer be able to accumulate Americans’ phone records in bulk. But Graham says this doesn’t settle any concerns over privacy.
in a CNN interview, he said he opposes the Freedom Act and would have preferred to keep the Patriot Act as is.
“The (metadata) provisions I don’t like at all,” Graham said of the Freedom Act in a June 2 interview with Jake Tapper. “Basically, you’ve undercut privacy now. All of the records will be in the hands of the phone company with hundreds of people available to look at the records versus 20 or 30 people in the government.”
We took a look into Graham’s claim that because of the Freedom Act, hundreds of phone company employees will now have access to the phone records, as opposed to just a couple dozen government employees currently.
But here’s the rub: The phone companies have always held this data, and the new law doesn’t change that.
The new law eliminates the NSA bulk collection program, but it does not affect how the companies themselves maintain their records, other than some standardization measures. The law does not cause the phone records to change hands, nor does it create new databases or record-keeping systems.
We rated Graham’s claim False.
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