Lindsey Graham: Silencing Elizabeth Warren Was 'Long Overdue'

"She is clearly running for the nomination in 2020," he said.
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Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) joined the chorus of Republicans backing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for cutting off Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) during a speech criticizing Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week.

“The bottom line is it was long overdue with her, I mean she is clearly running for the nomination in 2020,” he told radio host Mike Gallagher on Wednesday in a clip obtained by CNN’s KFile.

Warren quoted a letter on the Senate floor Tuesday night written by civil rights activist Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, in an effort to highlight concerns about Sessions when he was under consideration for a federal judgeship in 1986. He was rejected for the position over allegations of prejudice against African-Americans.

“Sen. Warren was giving a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation,” McConnell said later. “Nevertheless, she persisted.”

Sessions was confirmed as attorney general on Wednesday.

Graham broadened his assault on Warren out to what he views as a fractious Democratic Party.

It “is really being pushed by the most extreme forces in their community and they just don’t know how to handle it,” he said. “If they empower her, I think the Democratic Party is going to lose its way.”

Warren, however, argued that her speech was an attempt at unifying Democrats around their opposition to Sessions.

“It’s helped us have a better Democratic conversation,” Warren told “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah on Wednesday.

“We don’t have the votes in the United States Senate to block somebody like Jeff Sessions [as attorney general]. ... So what we’ve got to do is count on people all around this country to make their voices heard.”

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