'You don't mean save the country, you mean save your a--': Chris Cuomo lashes out at Sen. Lindsey Graham for defending Trump's election disinformation

• The CNN anchor Chris Cuomo ripped into Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Tuesday night for supporting President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.
• "Seriously, senator? Do your words still come from your brain, or just some reservoir of bile?" Cuomo said.
• Cuomo played a Fox News clip of Graham defending Trump's claims of voting irregularities in Georgia.
• "What is unreasonable is to sit on your a-- and do nothing when you've got a chance to save the country," Graham said in the clip.
• "No, you don't mean save the country, you mean save your a--," Cuomo responded.

The CNN anchor Chris Cuomo criticized Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Tuesday night over his refusal to acknowledge President Donald Trump's election loss.

"Seriously, senator? Do your words still come from your brain, or just some reservoir of bile?" Cuomo said during his opening monologue on "Cuomo Prime Time."

Cuomo played a clip of a Fox News interview on Monday in which Graham defended Trump's baseless claims of voting irregularities in Georgia.

"There's a civil war brewing in Georgia for no good reason," Graham said. "It's not unreasonable to ask the Legislature to come back in and order an audit of the signatures in the presidential race to see if the system worked."

The South Carolina senator added: "What is unreasonable is to sit on your a-- and do nothing when you've got a chance to save the country."

"No, you don't mean save the country, you mean save your a--," Cuomo said in response.

Cuomo described Graham as part of a group of "Retrumplicans" who have backed the president's unfounded allegations of election fraud.

—Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) December 9, 2020

The Trump campaign has repeatedly challenged President-elect Joe Biden's victory in Georgia. The president's legal team has filed and lost four lawsuits in the state, and some of Georgia's leaders have shut down attempts to let the Legislature decide the race.

Still, Trump has continued to push unfounded claims about the election, and Graham is one of many high-profile GOP members supporting him. In a recent survey by The Washington Post, only 27 congressional Republicans - out of 249 - acknowledged Trump's defeat.

The Department of Homeland Security has said the 2020 election was the most safe and secure in US history. Likewise, Attorney General William Barr said last week that the Justice Department and the FBI found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would alter the election results.