“We’ll have offers on the table when we find somebody that’s not crazy to deal with,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham. | Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo Government Shutdown Graham: GOP wants a Democrat ‘that’s not crazy’ for shutdown talks

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday said negotiations to end the partial government shutdown will not begin in earnest until Democrats put someone whom Republicans view as more reasonable in charge of the talks.

“We’ll have offers on the table when we find somebody that’s not crazy to deal with,” Graham said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We’re not going to put any offers on the table as long as people in charge of these negotiations accuse all of us who want a wall of being a racist.”


He did not refer to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) by name, but criticized her answer to a question of whether she would be open to putting one dollar toward funding the border wall. “A dollar? A dollar? Yeah, one dollar,” she told reporters Thursday.

Graham expressed willingness to negotiate instead with Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who appeared on the CBS program before him.

“When you see Dick Durbin and others in the room, not a bunch of staffers, when you see this rhetoric that those who want to build a wall are racist stop, when you see the idea one dollar’s enough for the wall, when that stuff ends, the real negotiations begin,” he said.

“Right now, the people running the show on the left are radical liberal Democrats who don’t see a border security problem, they see their own government being the problem,” he said. “There’s a deal to be had here, but it will include a wall.”

Graham again suggested a deal might include protections for young immigrants covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program.

However, President Donald Trump said this week that he did not want to talk about a DACA deal unless and until the Supreme Court rules in his favor.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions initiated a phaseout of DACA in September 2017, but that action was later blocked, first by three District Court judges and, eventually, by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.