Sep 6, 2022 5 min read

WASHINGTON – Sen. Lindsey Graham says he’s worried about our country.

We’re worried, too, Senator – and you’re not helping.

Graham’s expression of concern immediately followed a recent Fox News appearance during which he said that “there will be riots in the streets,” if the Justice Department indicts former president Donald Trump on charges related to his stashing classified documents in his Palm Beach, Fla., home.

This isn’t exactly speculation gone wild, especially after Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol because their hero wasn’t reelected. Some people have nothing better to do than throw tantrums. Parents are familiar with such behavior, though it’s usually from 2-year-olds.

There’s no dispute about whether Trump contributed to the riots that brought the country to its feet in horror. The record is clear, thanks to witnesses. Trump could have ended or prevented the riots but refused to command the protesters to stand down. As rioters crashed through doors and windows, threatening elected officials inside as they scrambled for cover, Trump instead continued to insist he’d won reelection. At long last, in a video message, he told the crowd to go home, saying that he loved them and that they were “very special.”

Such insanity would be laughable if it weren’t so damaging and damnable.

It is similarly unhelpful when Graham, the senior Republican senator from South Carolina, opens the door to another violent rage by saying riots will follow an indictment. Maybe, maybe not. But he said it as though it were a fait accompli. How does that help?

Graham subsequently tried to clarify his words by saying he was merely making a prediction, not threatening a riot. But if that were the case, he might have expressed his fear that a Trump indictment could lead some people to overreact. Saying he feared a violent response at least suggests that one would be profoundly opposed to such an act.

While I’m pretty sure Graham wouldn’t consciously encourage a riot, I’m not so sure he wouldn’t dog-whistle a little tune that would be likely to perk up some ears. Certainly, Trump amplified his words not long after Graham said them on Fox News.

So, yes, words do matter. A president’s words matter most – and sometimes a U.S. senator’s words can matter just as much. As a veteran politician and Air Force lawyer, Graham understands the impact of words said and unsaid. At this stage of his long career, you can bet he carefully measures every thought before he shapes it into a message.

Moreover, as a Trump buddy and stand-in, Graham is surely aware that when he talks, Trump supporters hear Trump. Funnyman Lindsey Graham – the independent, straight-shooting, wingman to the late senator John McCain – doesn’t exist anymore.

By any other name, he is Donald Trump.

So, when he speaks, people listen. Graham’s prediction effectively notified MAGA-land to again “stand back and stand by.” If he wasn’t inciting would-be rioters, he was granting them permission, whatever his denial implied or his true intentions may have been.

Trump essentially did the same thing when he repeatedly urged his supporters to “take back the country.” As Jan. 6 protesters gathered south of the White House, Trump urged them to go to the Capitol, saying, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness.”

Jan. 6 is only one front for which the president is recruiting lawyers. Prosecutors in Atlanta are trying to get to the bottom of the Trump White House-led scheme to find imaginary votes after Georgia went for Joe Biden in 2020. (Graham made some calls, it seems, on Trump’s behalf, in that caper. We may learn more about those later.) A probe of Trump’s finances, meanwhile, continues in New York state. The select House committee isn’t done with its probe of Jan. 6, which so far hasn’t been helpful to the former president. And, of course, it is anyone’s guess whether Attorney General Merrick Garland has enough evidence against Trump to justify an indictment.

We’ve now seen images of the classified documents retrieved from Trump’s castle, and they appear to be serious enough for concern. Even William P. Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, has said he sees no reason for Trump to have kept all that paper. But are they more serious than the classified documents Hillary Clinton had on her personal server and for which she was not indicted?

Republicans argue that if Clinton escaped prosecution for document mishandling, Trump should, too. Among the differences between the two cases, the most obvious is that the media dislikes Trump even more than they dislike Clinton.

Nevertheless, the appearance of a double standard would be hard to defend. Barring evidence that Trump intended to misuse the classified documents for his own purposes or obstructed federal efforts to recover them, the prudent conclusion to this docudrama would be to honor the Clinton standard and spare the country further trauma over the papers. Sometimes a tyrant is better neutralized than martyred.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post. Her email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.