Trans Woman Says “Hypocrite” Lindsey Graham Paid Her for Sex. She’s Calling Out His Anti-Trans Legacy

This story is a collaboration between Them and The Advocate.Taylor Snider says dealing with high-profile clientele was nothing new for her by 2015. She had been a sex worker for nearly seven years at that point, and was accustomed to being paid for her time and discretion. She tells Them that’s why she thought nothing of being paid for roughly a half-hour of sex work on June 7 of that year by a man she claims was the late South Carolina Senator — and then-Republican presidential candidate — Lindsey Graham, who had announced his candidacy six days prior.Snider says she didn’t initially realize who the man she had seen at the Washington Hilton was until he appeared on the mounted television of a divey New York City restaurant she and her friend were eating at just a week later.“CNN playing in the background and then all of a sudden he pops up on the TV, and he was talking about the Tea Party,” she tells Them. “I didn’t think anything of it.” Various press releases show that Graham gave interviews to CNN around that time, including a sit-down with Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room on June 17 and a June 13 conversation with Michael Smerconish that addresses the “talk radio warlords” — a seeming reference to the Tea Party, a political movement that challenged mainstream Republicanism in a precursor to MAGA’s rise.At the time, Graham was sometimes criticized within the Republican Party for being more moderate on some social issues, though he has always been hawkish on foreign policy and consistently supported restrictions on reproductive rights. When Snider says she had a paid sexual encounter with him, Graham had yet to use transgender people specifically as currency to further propel his political career. In the early days of his 2016 presidential campaign, Graham, 59 years old at the time, had flown out to Iowa for a series of campaign kickoff events, including a “Roast and Ride” event hosted by GOP Senator Joni Ernst in Boone on June 6,