The Daily Show had observers cackling with its response to Republican Darline Graham's loss in South Carolina's U.S. Senate race to Democrat Annie Andrews.
In July, Graham was appointed by Governor Henry McMaster to temporarily fill the Senate seat previously occupied by her brother, the late Senator Lindsey Graham. President Donald Trump backed her candidacy for a full six-year term.
Graham has acknowledged that she has "to work to earn voters," but insisted she was "not being handed" her brother's seat even though she quite literally was named to temporarily fill it. And she lost to Andrews, whose victory made her the first Democrat elected to the Senate from South Carolina in a generation and the first woman elected to represent the state in the chamber.
After The Hill reported that "Darline Graham falls to Democrat Annie Andrews in stunning Senate GOP defeat," The Daily Show responded with the following pointed message:
"Touching: Darline Graham honors her brother, the late Lindsey Graham, by finishing on bottom."
You can see the post below.
The Daily Show's post came just a couple of weeks after three sex workers alleged in a documentary released by The Young Turks and Swamp Watch Studios that the late Senator Graham paid them for sex. One of them said he was only 17 at the time and that the senator questioned his age before continuing the encounter.
Among the participants is Cory Burns, the adult film performer known professionally as Sean Harding. Burns helped bring the “Lady G” rumors into the spotlight through a series of social media posts in 2020. The posts amplified allegations that Graham had patronized male escorts while publicly opposing LGBTQ+ rights.
Graham publicly denied being gay during his lifetime. His sister has declined to respond to the allegations.
But people saw immediately what The Daily Show was getting at and applauded its quick wit.
After winning, Andrews said in her victory speech that South Carolina had "sent a clear message that this Senate seat does not belong to one family, one party, or to Washington DC."
She stressed that voters have "shown the nation that in this era of partisan divides, of vitriol and name-calling, in a politics dominated by billionaires and special interest groups and insiders in Washington, DC, that we will not bow down."
It's definitely a step up from the warmonger who rubber-stamped just about everything Trump has done, not that we'd expect Darline Graham to agree.
