By The Truth Hound
While attendance at Bilderberg by sitting members of Congress has become rather rare in recent years, leave it to super hawkish neo-conservative Sen. Lindsay Olin Graham (R-S.C.) to be the only current U.S. legislator officially listed as a participant at the exclusive annual confab this year in Dresden, Germany.
This American Free Press writer (who took over for late Bilderberg hound Jim Tucker to cover the group for AFP), when tracking Graham’s whereabouts through the Senate’s Periodical Press staff, found that Graham didn’t depart on the overnight flight to Germany until Friday afternoon on June 10, meaning he was only able to attend the last two days of Bilderberg—June 11-12.
He cast floor votes on June 8 and June 9, the latter of which was Bilderberg’s first day of the four-day meeting. At first, there was some question as to whether Graham would actually jet to Germany at all, given the Senate’s busy sessions June 10, as well as on Monday, June 13.
Yet, on the day he left, he was all pumped up about increasing defense spending, breathlessly proclaiming to the press, “I’m making defense spending push ‘my No. 1 reason to live.’”
And while that’s certainly notable—given the cutting-edge defense technology company people and current and former military figures who attend Bilderberg and may want to brainstorm defense plans with the Graham—there is also a widespread belief that Graham ventured to the 64th Bilderberg meeting to brainstorm on defeating the GOP candidacy of Donald J. Trump.
But perhaps most significantly, thanks to Graham’s wanderlust, the mainstream Kansas City Star (KCS) played a significant role in breaking the stony Bilderberg silence that the U.S. press usually practices by posting a grabby headline and respectable story online, specifically about Graham’s “excellent adventure” in Germany.
Meanwhile, however, the key Capitol Hill newspapers that claim to watch every move of U.S. lawmakers (The Hill, Politico, and Roll Call), as of the afternoon of Friday, June 10, apparently hadn’t run a word on Graham’s trip. AFP reached out to them to see what their reporting plans may be regarding Graham’s trip, if they’ll be civil enough to respond to the inquiries.
In stark contrast, the KCS blared the above-noted headline accompanied by three sub-headlines in its June 9 online edition, which could have been written by AFP. The main headline was worded: “Lindsey Graham to join global elite at the world’s most secretive annual meeting,” followed by “Graham will join European, North American political and business leaders in Germany,” “Topics will include US election and Britain’s referendum on leaving European Union” and “The senator’s outspoken criticism of Donald Trump echoes many Europeans’ worries.”
That comports with one of the 10 official topics announced by Bilderberg this year: “U.S. political landscape.”
In a June 10 podcast audio interview, hosted by AFP webmaster Dave Gahary, this writer and the host compared notes and determined that even Time magazine online this year had unexpectedly broken the traditional American mainstream-media silence regarding Bilderberg. And overseas media, whose heavier coverage of Bilderberg had started to fade in recent year, made some house. Those outlets, most of which tend to criticize Bilderberg’s critics more than Bilderberg itself, included the British Telegraph and the UK Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, thankfully, the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier in Graham’s home state, where viable opponents have tried with no avail so far to unseat the illustrious lawmaker, chimed in rather loudly on Graham’s junket to team up with the trans-national “consolidationists” skulking into Dresden to plan, and wheel and deal, “off the grid.”
Perhaps coincidentally and perhaps not, the Post and Courier’s June 10 story appeared online three hours after this writer sent that newspaper the news tip that Graham was headed to Bilderberg.
“Graham, who ran for president [for the 2016 GOP nomination race] last year, gained national exposure for being the only Republican contender to slam President Barack Obama’s Iraq war strategy while actually offering his own alternative. Since dropping out of the race at the end of 2015, he has been something of a voice of conscience for the Republican Party struggling to reconcile with its unconventional presidential nominee, Donald Trump,” Post and Courier reporter Emma Dumain wrote.
The online version of the Miami Herald on June 9 noted, “Lindsey Graham’s relentless, vocal criticism of Donald Trump has scored him an invite to meet . . . with global leaders behind closed doors at one of the world’s most secretive annual gatherings.”
As of this writing June 13, the three above-noted Washington papers evidently ignored Graham’s trip, inundated as they were with legislative “he said, she said” about the reported Orlando shooting.
Nevertheless, it could be said that Graham succeeded in “stinking up” the posh Dresden hotel where he met with Bilderberg, by bringing a boatload of unusual and unwelcome press coverage with him, however unwittingly. This could help make Bilderberg more of a household word and perhaps make it easier to demand that the internationalist cabal be dissolved someday.
It remains to be seen if other major media in Sen. Graham’s home state of South Carolina, besides the Charleston paper, will report much, if at all, on their “golden boy’s” trip.
It’d indeed be interesting to see Graham get “dressed down” the way that former Bilderberg Steering Committee member—British MP Kenneth Clarke—was taken to task for his Bilderberg collusion by feisty late Labour Party MP Michael Meacher on the House of Commons floor, just as Bilderberg-2013 in the UK was starting.
Interestingly, Clarke resigned from the Steering Committee on or around the very day Meacher hammered him, the 5th of June 2013.
With his characteristic messianic 10-mile gaze, Graham’s nonstop bellicose speeches and stances for the never-ending “war on terror,” and his flippant, casual attitude about civil liberties and constitutional integrity, make him an especially deserving recipient of a similarly serious tongue-lashing on the Senate floor for attending Bilderberg. While the odds seem slim at this writing for such a delightful dose of justice, we’ll see what may happen.