The White House Declares War on Lindsey Graham

Curt Mills

Politics, North America

The administration is increasingly framing immigration as a national security issue—and is taking no prisoners.

A White House official launched repeated, pointed attacks on Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, on Thursday afternoon. According to the official, “If you look at the history of failed immigration reform bills, at some point you have to ask yourself the question whether Lindsey Graham’s involvement in drafting those bills means that rather being the solution to the problem, Lindsey Graham’s presence on those bills is the problem?”

The official proceeded throughout the call to single out the senator individually for stark criticism. The attacks prompted many in the media on the group phone call to demand that the call be placed on the record, and for the official to be identified explicitly, but that request was declined.

And for the second time in as many days, the White House emphasized that it is likely done negotiating over immigration -- it has wholeheartedly backed a bill written by Sen. Chuck Grassley, that it hopes could get as many as nine Democratic votes in the upper chamber, while concurrently offering support for a more hardline House bill from Rep. Robert Goodlatte.

The administration views the Grassley bill, which omits mandatory E-Verify and could potentially expand the number of illegal immigrants with DACA-type status, as conciliatory enough. But that hasn’t stopped other senators, namely Graham and John McCain, historically party pointmen on the issue, from offering competing or parallel legislation.

The result has been an increasingly vicious war of words between Graham, particularly, the Department of Homeland Security and certain White House officials.

As the administration was briefing reporters early Thursday afternoon, Graham told Capitol Hill reporters: “As long as Stephen Miller is running the White House and Tom Tancredo’s press secretary at DHS,” progress on the matter will commence at a glacial pace.

Miller, formerly Jeff Sessions’ right hand man, is the White House’s foremost remaining immigration hawk, following the departure of White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon last summer. Tancredo is a former congressman from Colorado who waged a quixotic bid for president in 2008.