Former US president Donald Trump reportedly called South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham a “progressive senator” in front of a crowd at a dinner event at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night.
Graham, a former staunch ally of Trump’s, was named in an Axios report published on Thursday including excerpts from a new book by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns.
According to the book, Graham may have attempted to invoke the 25th amendment against Trump during the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.
In a speech the following night, Trump mocked the South Carolina senator, saying, “There are a couple of senators. And we have our progressive senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham. He’s a progressive, but he’s our progressive.”
This is not the first time in recent months Trump has criticized Graham for breaking with the former president publicly. In January, after Graham spoke out against granting pardons for Capitol rioters as “inappropriate,” Trump called Graham a “RINO (Republican in Name Only).”