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Nepo Senator Flees After Falling Apart at Must-Win Debate

Darline Graham abruptly exited after a string of gaffes.

South Carolina Sen. Darline Graham was busted fleeing the scene after her lackluster debate performance.

Graham debated Dr. Annie Andrews, a Democrat, as the pair raced to become the next senator for the state. After it was over, Graham appeared to flee the scene, opting to skip talking to reporters and try to “spin” her performance as a win, as is typical of candidates and their surrogates after debates.

Even so, her campaign tried to spin her abrupt departure as some sort of a win.

“Winners of debates don’t usually come to the spin room,” her spokesman T.W.Arrighi declared to reporters after the matter.

While candidates will always send surrogates to head to the “spin room,” candidates themselves will sometimes show face after a debate. Candidates typically do this when they feel that they won the debate and want to tout what they view as successes.

For example, then-candidate Donald Trump went right to the spin room, where journalists talk to surrogates, to talk to reporters himself after his disastrous debate against then-Vice President Kamala Harris. While most strategists agreed that Harris won that debate, Trump, who never concedes a race, tried to set the record straight himself and called it the “best debate I’ve ever had.”

And more recently, both Michigan Senate candidates, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and Republican Mike Rogers, advocated for themselves in the spin room after their recent debate.

But the debate objectively did not go very well for Graham, the younger sister of late Sen. Lindsey Graham, who repeatedly stumbled over her answers and appeared to struggle during some lines of questioning.

Andrews, 45, tried to focus on the notion that Graham, 62, is simply the choice of Trump, who has reiterated that she has his “Complete and Total Endorsement” in the race.

She particularly honed in on a comment Graham made during the primary debate for the Republican nomination, in which she said: “National security is not my thing.”

“If your surgeon said that appendectomies aren’t really his thing, would you still hand him a scalpel? No,” Andrews said. “So why would we hand Darline Graham a full term in the US Senate? She is unserious and unqualified.”

While she largely avoided another gaffe as she did in the primary debate, Graham appeared awkward on stage, as she struggled to hone in on her attack lines for Andrews.

And in typical MAGA fashion, many of her claims appeared not to be entirely true.

“Let’s not forget, again, how the war started,” Graham proclaimed. “The Democrats let Iran get a nuclear weapon, almost. They were very close to getting one.”

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While debates largely do not appear to be a strong suit for Graham, Trump has still had nothing but praise for her since he hand-picked her to take over the seat after her brother’s passing.

On her gaffe, he excused her and explained she made her comments because she “understands that national security is my thing.”

“She’s very smart, and she was being honest. She’s into the price of groceries. … She is going to do what the military wants, and really what the president wants,” Trump said at the time.

He has repeatedly gushed about her on Truth Social, calling her “a spectacular person” and “a true American Patriot” among other Trumpian compliments.

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Annabella RosciglioneReporter

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