Trump mocks Lindsey Graham, calling him a 'progressive senator from South Carolina'
- Former President Donald Trump mocked Sen. Lindsey Graham at an event at Mar-a-Lago.
- Trump called Graham a "progressive senator from South Carolina" in a speech Friday night.
Former President Donald Trump mocked Sen. Lindsey Graham during a speech at a fundraising dinner, calling him a "progressive."
"There are a couple of senators. And we have our progressive senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham," Trump said Friday at the Lincoln Day fundraising dinner held by the Palm Beach County GOP at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.
"He's a progressive, but he's our progressive," Trump added.
Trump's mocking of Graham came a day after news broke that Graham might have threatened to seek to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office during the Capitol riot.
This was according to excerpts Axios published from "This Will Not Pass," a new book by the New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns. Martin and Burns wrote that Graham made a furious call to the White House counsel Pat Cipollone during the riot, where he made that threat.
Graham has broken with Trump on several issues in recent months. In January, he criticized Trump for floating the possibility of pardons for Capitol rioters, calling Trump's idea "inappropriate."
This prompted Trump to call Graham a RINO, a GOP insult meaning "Republican in name only." The term has been used often against Trump's intraparty critics like Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Graham, however, is known as a staunch Trump ally and took credit in January for talking Trump out of holding a press conference on the first anniversary of the Capitol riot. Graham also continued to voice his public support for Trump this year, even saying in January that he would not back Mitch McConnell for Senate GOP leader unless McConnell had a "working relationship" with Trump.