Congress’s leading warhawk and Disney fan finally disclosed the reason why he vacationed at the children’s theme park last weekend.
“Because I like Disney. It’s a great place to go,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, 70, told reporter Carolina Lumetta during a luncheon event in Greenville, South Carolina, on Thursday. “It’s a great place to share friends.”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t shut the government down,” the South Carolina lawmaker, who has never been married or had children, continued. “I don’t know where everybody else went on the break, but I’ve been working my butt off here. But, I’m entitled to life, too, and at the end of the day, that’s all you got to say.”
Images obtained by TMZ showed the hawkish senator’s spring break visit to the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, over the weekend amid President Donald Trump’s war on Iran, which he has staunchly supported despite its lack of a formal authorization by Congress.
Throughout his visit, which he had said he had been on to “meet friends,” Graham was seen holding a $40 The Little Mermaid-themed bubble wand for a little girl while she was in the bathroom, waiting in the $59 buffet line at Chef Mickey’s restaurant, and even riding the Space Mountain rollercoaster, TMZ reported.
The Daily Beast reached out to Graham for comment.
The senator’s communications director, Taylor Reidy, previously provided the Daily Beast with a statement that Graham had given to TMZ on Sunday.
“I was invited to a meeting in South Florida on Friday with Trump official Steve Witkoff and others to talk about the possibility of normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. I went to Orlando to meet friends after. I’m already back in South Carolina,” he said. “I voted 7 times to fully fund the government. Call a Democrat.”
Graham has been Trump’s number one cheerleader over the war he launched on Iran alongside Israel on Feb. 28.
Immediately following the 79-year-old president’s primetime address to the nation on Wednesday night—where he offered the American people little new information about the unprecedented military action—the South Carolina senator appeared giddy on Fox News to applaud the president’s underwhelming speech.
“This is how you win in 32 days,” he told host Sean Hannity. “You have a commander-in-chief that will unleash the might of the American military with clear objectives.”
Trump said the military’s “core objectives” were “nearing completion,” though he said that American forces would continue to hit Iran “extremely hard” over the next two to three weeks.
Thirteen American service members have been killed in the conflict since it began, and over 200 have been wounded. In a video address on March 1, Trump said that “there will likely be more” Americans who die before the end of the war.
