WASHINGTON — A frustrated Sen. Lindsey Graham said Monday he can’t believe he’s so far behind in the Republican presidential race, with just 1 percent in polls — when Donald Trump is “crazy as hell,” and Ben Carson once “tried to kill someone.”
Carson recalled his hot-tempered childhood on “Meet the Press” Sunday, saying he “would go after people with rocks, and bricks and baseball bats and hammers. And . . . when I was 14 I tried to stab someone.”
That was too much for Graham, who consistently polls at the bottom of the GOP pack, way behind co-leaders Trump and Carson.
“On our side, you’ve got the No. 2 guy tried to kill someone at 14, and the No. 1 guy is high energy and crazy as hell,” Graham said on MSNBC.
“How am I losing to these people? Just look at Donald Trump’s foreign policy. What is it? What’s he going to do about ISIL? What is it? What is his game plan to destroy ISIL? Does anybody know?”
Graham, an Air Force vet with a dozen years in the Senate, has campaigned on a more aggressive Middle East policy. Neither Trump nor Carson has experience in elected office or serving in the military.
“And I’ve tried to murder no one ever, so this should move me up a little bit,” Graham joked. “Well, the day’s not over, but as of right now, nobody.”
Ahead of the third GOP debate, Graham insisted he and the other establishment candidates must target the outsiders more effectively, or else Trump will win and “Hillary Clinton will mop the floor with this guy.”
Graham has gone after the Republican front-runners before. Last week, he slammed their foreign policy as “incoherent.”
Both Trump and Carson have said they would not have gone into Afghanistan after 9/11. Graham said that makes no sense.
“To me, it’s beyond bizarre that after 9/11, you would leave the Taliban in place,” Graham told Fox news on Oct. 19.