Graham criticizes McConnell over debt ceiling, says GOP leaders must work with Trump

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday continued his criticisms of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for adopting a bipartisan deal that allowed Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. Graham, who has become one of former president Donald Trump’s most vocal defenders, argued that someone who did not have a good working relationship with Trump could not be an effective Republican leader.

“What I’m worried about is that for four months the Republican Senate said we would not lift a finger to help the Democrats raise the debt ceiling. We would make them use reconciliation,” Graham, R-S.C., said to “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace. “At the end, we did not make them use reconciliation, which changed the rules of the Senate in a House bill. I don’t like that a lot. . . . What we did is promised one thing and deliver another.”

McConnell, R-Ky., had in October vowed that Republicans would not help Democrats raise the debt ceiling this month. But last week, through a deal made between McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., 14 Republicans joined Democrats in advancing a one-time tweak to the Senate’s rules, allowing Democrats to raise the debt ceiling without the risk of Republican filibuster. Without the deal, Republicans would have blocked any attempt to raise the borrowing cap as part of their broader protest of President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.

Before the compromise last week, Graham had reportedly warned his GOP colleagues that McConnell had “led them on a charge up a hill and they were getting shot in the back” on the issue, according to the Hill. Asked whether it was “really such a big deal” on Sunday, Graham said it was and asserted it would have implications for the midterm elections next year.

“It was a big deal to me,” he told Wallace. “If we’re going to be successful in 2022, we’re going to have to work together as a team. And here’s what I would say to every Republican: If you want to be . . . a Republican leader in the House or the Senate and you don’t have a working relationship with Donald Trump, you cannot be effective. So, I hope we’ll get on the same page here.”

The message was a barely veiled one for McConnell, whom Trump has frequently disparaged as ineffective. On Friday, the former president, who was banned from Twitter after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, issued a statement through his Save America PAC calling McConnell a “loser” who is “very bad for the Republican Party.”

“Mitch McConnell, the Broken Old Crow, has just conceded, for absolutely nothing and for no reason, the powerful Debt Ceiling negotiating block, which was the Republicans’ first-class ticket for victory over the Democrats,” Trump stated. “He was afraid to play that card even though, without question, they would have completely FOLDED on the Build Back Worse Bill, which will destroy the fabric of our Country and virtually anything else that the Republicans wanted.”

A representative for McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday. After the Jan. 6 insurrection, McConnell had said he would never speak to Trump again. His votes and actions, however, have more often hewed closer to Trump’s interests, and McConnell has pledged he would vote for the GOP’s 2024 nominee, even if it is Trump again.

Graham on Sunday tried to maintain that he liked McConnell, who “had been a great leader on many things.” But Graham closed his interview by again - as he has for months - laying down an unequivocal endorsement of Trump as the ultimate leader of the GOP.

“We’re going into an election cycle where the wind’s to our back. We can’t do this again,” Graham told Wallace. “But when you look forward to this party, Donald Trump is the most consequential Republican in the entire Republican Party, maybe in the history of the party since Ronald Reagan. And if you’re going to lead this party in the House and the Senate, you have to have a working relationship with Donald Trump or it will not work.”

The interview with Graham would be Wallace’s last one on “Fox News Sunday,” before the longtime Fox anchor then announced he was leaving the network. Wallace will join CNN+, a new streaming service that will launch next year, CNN announced Sunday.

The Washington Post’s Tony Romm contributed to this report.