JUST IN: Lindsey Graham shreds Pelosi, Biden over 'For the People Act'

hello everybody good turnout uh thank you very much i just been meeting with the governor and his staff talk about my day uh i started at the game vaccination center being run by prisma healthcare and usc and the national guard governor i'm very proud of what you're doing if you want a vaccination you get one it takes about an hour i've been vaccinated i would urge everybody in the state to get vaccinated we need about 70 80 percent of our population to get to herd immunity so we can go back about our lives and play football safely so governor mcmaster i want to congratulate you and your staff working with the private sector and making the vaccine available to as many south carolinians as possible and it takes about an hour and it'd be well worth your time so i want to congratulate you on that the reason i'm here today with the governor is i've been in the house and the senate for a while now and i've never been more worried about a piece of legislation than i am hr1 now why am i worried hr1 is an attempt by the the radical left to take over every election system in the country h.r 1 would be the federalization of elections for congress it would be in violation of the constitution in my view but the contents of this bill should scare everybody in south carolina and throughout the nation who believe in robust voting but integrity at the ballot box number one it does away with voter id requirements hr1 would eliminate the ability of any state to require a voter to prove you are who you are that to me is stunning you can't get on an airplane you can't go anywhere in this country you can uh apparently do much for delta and coca-cola shareholders you have to have an id to go the shareholder meeting so it eliminated voter id it would take away from the states the ability to redistrict for for congressional purposes what does that mean to south carolina that's a disaster for us we have seven members of congress now because our population in south carolina is growing every few years you redistrict the house of representative representatives based on population growth where people are moving out of the deep blue liberal states because of taxes and crime they're coming to texas and south carolina and florida and under the the laws of the land today you leave it up to the states with court oversight to draw the new congressional districts this bill would eliminate that they would create a federal panel to take away from south carolina the ability to draw our congressional lines that's a tremendous infringement on the ability of a state to run its election as envisioned by the constitution ballot harvesting that becomes the law of the land what does that mean it means a third party can collect ballots of other people they can walk through neighborhoods walk to community centers walk to nursing homes and collect ballots and in theory drop them off at the right place but that is right for fraud because if you have the wrong person collecting the ballot they'll throw some of them in the garbage can ballot harvesting i think is a threat to democracy as we know it it allows same-day voter registration which i think is to be problematic it requires the federal government to finance campaigns there's a requirement in this bill that the federal government will provide six dollars to every candidate who raises a dollar from low dollar donations remember our election if you're in the tv business i hope all of you got raises because it's not because they couldn't afford to give you money if they wanted to i spent 110 million dollars and jamie harrison i think was 132. under this bill for every low dollar donation we both received you'd get six bucks you're talking about over a billion dollars available to campaign in south carolina who wants to go through that so all i can say is it's the biggest power grab since i've been in congress it will take away every state's ability to run free and fair elections it will do away with the requirement for voter identification it will take away the ability of a state to redistrict and send it up to the federal government it institutionalizes ballot harvesting and requires mail in voting as the way to go that you'll get a ballot whether you want one or not this to me is a very serious attempt to alter the balance of power to centralize in the federal government a voting system that's right for fraud at the expense of every american who wants to vote fairly with that i'll turn it over governor mcmaster thank you senator graham it is thank you for being with us today uh senator graham is exactly right and it is it is really hard to believe what is in this bill it has now passed the house and is in the senate and as you know the votes are 50 50 in the senate between the two parties but this bill h.r 1 threatens the constitutional sovereignty of the state of south carolina now those are not just words that's very important this this country our state is built on the sovereignty of the states this bill takes that away like others i have sworn an oath to preserve protect and defend the constitution of this state and of the united states an oath so help me god many of you have taken such an oath as long as i am serving as governor i will stand up against those who seek to infringe or deny south carolina south carolinians their constitutionally protected freedoms and liberty i must say i've been in and out of politics for a number of years as has senator graham as have others i have never seen anything like this and i know there have been some people that made statements about the georgia election reform and other things and they have overstated it they have erroneously characterized they've exaggerated some of those provisions that you've seen on television in other places but there's no way to exaggerate the danger and the harm that these provisions if passed will do to our state and our country it is hard to believe they will eliminate the requirement any kind of id requirement other than saying that you are who you say you are and you can register to vote on the same day as the election it requires the states requires the states to have early voting i don't mean absentee voting we have a good process for absentee voting here you can get your ballot you can it'll be mailed to you 30 days in advance you have to apply for it you vote sign it have a witness send it back in it must be received by seven o'clock on election day must be received this bill throws all of that away this is the largest invitation to fraud that i can imagine and i don't know what they will come up with next if they get this done people during the last election they said well we don't need all these all these requirements because we don't have any voter fraud in south carolina or other places well when i was in the u.s attorney's office we prosecuted voter fraud 30 individuals were convicted is in dylan county some of you may remember that and it all centered around absentee ballots they were taking absentee ballots getting them to take them out helping the people fill them out and then they do the voting form or tell them who to vote for they pay them i think it's a half pint of liquor five dollars was it going price and that's voter fraud loosening the requirements on absentee voting to eliminate the integrity of that is bad enough but this bill goes even farther it is hard to believe that this bill has actually passed the house of representatives of the united states of america it is hard to believe so i thank you senator graham for standing up i know that there are many of your colleagues there that will stand up against this and we will certainly support you and stand up here as well again this is not an exaggeration this is uh breathtaking in its destruction to the integrity of our election system any questions south carolina i'm wondering do you feel like the state's election laws need to change yeah i think we we need to speaker lucas has a bill in that would require each of the county election offices to operate under the same procedures under the state election commission they ought to be doing that there was confusion on verifying signatures and a lot of other things we we need to have a consistent system around the state we need to do that but one reason we didn't have the problems they had in other states is is we went after it when it when it came up when there was an effort to remove the witness signature and absentee ballots we fought that in court took it all the way to the supreme court and won i wish other states had done the same thing had gotten into it earlier and had been able to to push their way through the court system but this thing regardless of what we do what our laws are here this bill will change everything i think it is blatantly unconstitutional it is enormous in its impact all negative we want to have a robust fair easy convenient voting but it must have integrity corruption has no place in the election process much less being invited by a bill in the congress it is really it's breathtaking to think of the impact that this will have if it passes yes sir senator graham uh there's a lot of national conversation about whether senator joe hansen would vote on this i know he's yeah what's your sense about where he stands on this so that's really good so here's what's going on from my point of view they're going after georgia as being jim crow 2.0 why they'll be going after texas next what they're doing in georgia is allow you 17 days to vote now you've got to have a an id to vote and if you don't have one they'll get one for you including weekends how are you suppressing people's right to vote when you give them 17 days to vote including weekends so the bottom line to me is that they're setting up hr1 for passage by saying that states like texas and georgia and maybe south carolina be next i don't know that we have to have a national voting standard because these states like georgia are suppressing the vote based on along racial lines so here's what i think i think that joe manchin is not going to turn on the people of west virginia because here's his choice allow the people of west virginia to conduct elections or allow the federal government to take over the election system for every american and impose upon every state like like west virginia insane requirements no voter id so i would imagine that in west virginia if you ask the average person do you believe you should have an id to prove you are who you are when you vote it would be overwhelming i would imagine most west virginians would want states to draw the lines not some group in congress i am sure that most west virginians wouldn't like the idea of ballot harvesting where some partisan person can collect ballots from neighborhoods and other places and turn them in if they want to and if they don't they don't turn them in so at the my view is that i doubt if most west virginians want the federal government to be on the hook for six dollars for every dollar you get through a donation so i'm hopeful that joe manchin will look at hr1 as destroying the ability of west virginia to conduct an election as they see fit following the laws of the land the reason i'm here with governor mcmaster is to let every south carolinian know why i'm so upset if you can show me voter abuse where people are not allowed to vote fairly and freely i want to fix that i see a political effort to institutionalize voting at the federal level on terms most advantageous to the most radical people in the country and i'm not going to be part of that and i'm hoping uh joe manchin will not be they're trying to change the filibuster for this they're trying to convince joe manchin just work with us on hr1 let's change the filibuster for one bill why are they picking this this will destroy ballot integrity this will institutionalize techniques used by the left to expand the vote in a fashion where there will be no integrity in the vote this is the biggest power grab in modern american history being pushed by the most radical people in modern american history to change the way we vote to destroy the integrity of the ballot box and we will not stand for it in south carolina and i am confident that joe manchin will be listening to the people of west virginia [Music] i'm all for that citizens united is your problem i don't like dark money i didn't i had all the money thanks to the generosity of people throughout the country i was a well-funded candidate but but some of these packs come out of nowhere they come into a state you don't know who's given the money they beat the hell out of you and they leave and you don't know what their agenda is count me in for uh transparency but you got citizens united and i've i've already talked to sheldon whitehouse i want people to know you know where the money's coming from i'm i believe in transparency i believe in disclosing your donors so that's a that's something i could work poll found on the majority of americans would support same-day voter registration i recognize that this bill has a lot of layers to it but do you see anything that's redeeming it in addition to the dark money could you get behind same-day voter registration or any kind of compromise to me i want to make it easy to vote hard to cheat i don't want to have an influx on the you know voting is a sacred right but it's also a sacred process i'd rather leave it up the state of south carolina why should we be mandating that i mean if if it's working in a state and they like it great if henry and the people of south carolina don't want to go down that road great too for me i'd like people to get registered make it easy to be registered but be on the books when you show up they'll see your name you show an id and you vote i don't mind voting by mail but i don't want to mail people ballots who don't request them what happens to all these ballots and apartment complexes laying around when people move the idea of ballot harvesting offends the hell out of me that some person with a partisan edge can go through a neighborhood and collect people's ballots help them fill it out and turn it in if they want to and if they don't they don't these are terrible ideas as to the same day voting i'd leave it up people south carolina we actually had in the last election i know two or three two people called me saying they'd moved from other states 20 or 30 years ago there hadn't been back been citizens here voting everything else buying houses raising children and yet they got multiple ballots from those states asking them to vote it's easy for these things to get out of hand when you have people that the stakes are high and people will do things that they they shouldn't do and there's there's no reason on earth to do what h1 is asking it would make all of that easier voting needs to be completely free of corruption it needs to have integrity we need to have confidence in the system and hr one would destroy that governor don't think that's necessary i think that's a bad idea it doesn't doesn't make sense to me looks like a power grab there for no reason but speaker lucas's bill is superb needs to be done every county election office ought to have the same rules or to operate by the same safe procedures prescribed procedures and there shouldn't be a question about how do you how do you check a signature well how do you verify this how do you do that those those sorts of questions don't even need to be asked yes we've discussed it with the speak and we've made our views known to the senate um as far as director there's been a lot of frustration from state house leaders about how she handled the letters last year the lawsuits and i'm wondering whether you have confidence in the elections well i think this i think those letters were very unfortunate i know their conversations have been going on about that since then and are continuing well i think there are there are conversations going on among various parties about the election commission in general and things you mentioned in particular and senator graham uh you've mentioned in the past especially after january 6 that joe biden is in the white house right now he is the standing president there are still some south carolinians who do question federal elections to that what do you say into anything that there was actually not only people that were supporters of them president trump who were there on january well number one i voted to certify the election results under our constitution the role of the congress is to basically to count the electoral votes certified by the states when there's a conflict in a state electoral when you have two sets that are contrary to each other then congress has a role trying to figure it out but i certified i voted to certify the election results in georgia having said that the consent decree where you really didn't have to have a signature before you applied for the ballot was problematic they have uh signature verification problems in georgia they were obvious to me but they went to court and the system worked and joe biden won the election what i'm worried about is 2022. i'm worried about this becoming law if this becomes law you're going to undermine the integrity of the ballot box to where it will be hard to convince the average american this is on the up and up because the average american regardless of party believes you should be able to prove you are who you are the first thing in this bill that just bowls me over is that there's no longer a requirement for voter id it'd be illegal to do it what does redistricting have to do with voting integrity that's a power grab what does a six to one money match have to do with voting integrity act blue raises a lot more money than the republicans can raise on the democratic side so they're trying to take the advantage they have through these small dollar donors and leverage it through the federal law what does ballot harvesting have to do with improving integrity of the ballot box it's a way to gather people's votes in a in a system that i think is very nefarious so this is a power grab this is not about making it easier to vote this is not about anything other than trying to consolidate power on terms most advantageous to the liberal left we're not going to put up for it and south up with it in south carolina now i hope joe manchin will hang tough because senator manchin represents one of the most conservative states in the union and i can't believe that people in west virginia would put up with this i can tell you haven't been all over the state people in south carolina are just shocked that the federal government would even be contemplating this not only are we contemplating it we're one or two votes away henry from this happening they're willing to change the filibuster rule which i have opposed changing we had the house we had the senate we had the white house president trump was tweeting every day against me and mcconnell change the filibuster rules so we can pass anything we want as republicans well i said no because the senate is different it ought to be a place to slow things down to build a bipartisan consensus 27 democrats governor signed a letter with me to mitch mcconnell and senator schumer when we were in charge of everything urging us as republicans not to change the filibuster rule i signed that letter there were 61 of us those same people where are they now sounds a lot like me voting for their judges and they're destroying kavanaugh well i'm pretty tired of that so all these democrats that were urging us to maintain the integrity of the senate are now willing to change the rules for this one bill they understand that they can pass h.r 1 it would be the biggest change in the way we vote beneficial to the radical left in the history of the country and i'm hoping that a few senators on the other side will not play this game and i'm hoping that the state house will urge the delegation not to be part of passing hr one what's possibly could happen with that that this is a this is a joke the reason they're trying to stop i am willing and i'm sure henry would be too if you don't have a driver's we'll give everybody an id i don't want i don't want to put a burden on anybody if you don't have an id we will get you one so you can vote so this is eroding the voter identification requirement what's wrong with asking people to have an id to prove you are who you are when you vote you have to have it when you go to the airport and democrats are talking about a vaccine passport they're wanting you to have a document to prove you've had a vaccine to be able to conduct business in the country and to travel but they don't want you to be able to prove you are who you are so it's pretty obvious to me this is not about voter integrity it's about power grip i don't know that one i'll read that one yeah i think that's got a lot to do with georgia uh yeah i don't know that's one of the 12 things they gave me i didn't mention i don't even know what it means myself but i don't need to get past voter id i don't need get past redistricting and ballot harvesting those are the guts of this thing taking away the power of the states to draw the state lines is devastatingly bad for south carolina because we're growing doing a way of voter id is bad for the integrity of the ballot box and mail in voting on a mass scale where you get the ballot where you want it or not is right for fraud and ballot harvesting is just an absolute nightmare and i don't like the idea of a six to one federal government match for every dollar you raise as a candidate that's enough for me thank you [Music] that is nonsense that's nonsense this is dangerous it will destroy the system of elections if there's any one out there who does not want nancy pelosi and chuck schumer to be in charge of their lives then you don't want to support this if this if this passes into law just to put a face on it you will have those two individuals and those who think just like they do and the rest of the radicals will be in charge of your lives because the people that will get elected are the people who will be agreeing with them if i could just put a fine point on it you know i voted for senate uh criminal justice reform the first step deck there are a lot of african-american and hispanic men who have been put in jail for a very long time because of three strikes and outlaw if there are certain parts of this country your chance to encounter the cops is greater than other places your economic uh situation has a lot to do with whether or not you're going to be exposed to crime that's just a fact i'd like to change systems i was working with senator scott to do something about police reform at the end of the day they're calling all of us racist because we won't give in to this power grab they play the race card morning noon and night i am tired of it i think it's cheap i think it's sick for the president of the united states joe biden who's been a friend for years to say that what they're doing in georgia is jim crow 2.0 some of you got families that lived through jim crow where people were beaten deterred from voting poll taxes literacy tests institutional efforts to keep black people from voting the highest voter participation in the country in the last election and i'm proud of that i want every eligible voter to be able to vote but i want you to do it in a way that we have confidence in the results so playing the race card is not going to work here to major league baseball you don't know what you're talking about you're moving the all-star game that has less voting opportunities in colorado than they will in georgia this is not going to work our friends in georgia are revamping their voting system in a way that makes sense to me requiring a voter identification even if you do mail in balloting bottom line here folks this is an effort by the left to paint any opposition southern poverty law center included to h.r 1 to equate that you're a racist it is not going to work this is 2021 count me in for robust voting count men for everybody being able to vote but i want sure i want to make sure they do it without cheating and that's what this is about thank you everyone thank you you

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 593,829

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Keywords: Sen. Lindsey Graham, HR1, For the People Act

Id: AiEBEaB1KV4

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021