Now that Sen. Lindsey Graham has morphed into a Trump apologist he spent some time defending him against John McCain's anti-white nationalism speech, telling Chuck Todd it was really targeted at Steve Bannon.

After Meet the Press host Chuck Todd played clips from former President George Bush, Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain for speaking out about Trump (though not by name) and Trump's divisive and despicable white nationalistic "brand of politics," Senator Lindsey Graham sat down with Todd to make excuses for Trump.

At one time Sen. Graham was fierce with his attacks against Trump's brand of divisiveness and extremism, describing Trump as "a race baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot."

But now things have changed. Sen. Graham has been joined to the hip of Sen. McCain for much of his career, but suddenly he's throwing out excuses to defend Trump, even after Donald has savagely attacked his mentor, who is suffering from brain cancer.

Todd said, "You were tough on candidate Donald Trump. In fact, I think right before you got out you called him a race baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. You heard what President Bush said. Where are we?"

Sen. Graham replied, "Well he won, I lost."

He continued, "President Bush is still popular in the Republican Party, but Donald Trump couldn't have won without rejecting the last 16 years really when you think there were a lot of people like about it."

There, that fixes everything. Trump won so now he's not a race baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot? This is called being an enabler, Goober.

After mangling his words about why Trump actually won the election, Graham then threw out a bizarre defense of the racism that Trump has injected back into American politics.

"I'm more in the [President] Bush camp on foreign policy," Graham explained. "McCain's speech was about not going down the [Steve] Bannon road. When you look at who is around President Trump he has more people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham than he does Bannon."

While Bannon's words were offensive to the Values Voter Summit, he was not the president.

And Steve Bannon was Trump's chief strategist for much of his presidential campaign and just was booted out of the White House after serving the first eight months of Trump's presidency.

Sebastian Gorka, an unapologetic white nationalist was also just kicked out as well by Gen. John Kelly, who became the new chief of staff as Trump's White House was spinning out of control.

Trump's entire campaign was based on hate, racism, divisiveness and smearing his rivals and it started from the beginning of his campaign when he rode down the escalator and claimed Mexican undocumented workers were rapists and murdered.

Graham tried to attribute Trump's popularity to his stance against Bush's foreign policy, but that's simply not true. Todd said what the former presidents were criticizing was more about civility.

Todd asked, "When did this idea it's more important to be pugilistic, it's more important to land that punch?"

Sen. Graham admitted as much and said, "It became part of the discourse when he came down the escalator. The first thing Donald Trump talked about was pretty tough and he never stopped and he won."

"What does that say about us?"

Graham replied, "It means that we want somebody who is not traditional, we're sick and tired of the status quo."

This is crap. The Republican party has become a fever swamp of white nationalism and Graham knows it. Winning does not excuse racism, sexism, lies, coverups and possibly colluding with a foreign government.

Maybe Lindsey should listen to his mentor again.

As John McCain said, "To fear the world we have organized and led the three quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain the last, best hope of earth, for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems, is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history," McCain said to prolonged applause."