Trump hits Lindsey Graham over alleged ‘disgusting lie’

WASHINGTON — Accusing Sen. Lindsey Graham of a “disgusting lie,” Donald Trump warned the South Carolina Republican voters will punish him for criticizing the president’s response to the racially tinged violence in Charlottesville, Va.

Graham in a Wednesday statement said Trump, during an impromptu press conference Tuesday, “took a step backward by again suggesting there is moral equivalency between the white supremacist neo-Nazis and KKK members who attended the Charlottesville rally and people like Ms. [Heather] Heyer,” referring to the young woman killed in a car attack by a Nazi sympathizer.

Trump hit back on Twitter this morning, calling the senator “Publicity seeking Lindsey Graham” and saying Graham “falsely stated” Trump said there is a moral equivalency between groups like the Klu Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists on one side and counter-protesters like Heyer on the other.

The president dubbed Graham’s statement “Such a disgusting lie.”

He then harkened back to the 2016 GOP presidential primary, in which he cruised to the party’s nomination while Graham never gained any traction. Graham “just can’t forget his election trouncing,” Trump wrote, then writing what sounded like a threat: “The people of South Carolina will remember!”

The president does appear to have a point – he never explicitly said on Tuesday that he sees white supremacist groups and counter-protesters on the same moral level.

“I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane,” Trump said during a testy Q&A with reporters in the lobby of his Manhattan tower. “What I’m saying is this: You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible. And it was a horrible thing to watch.

“But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left … that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.”