More than three decades in Congress came to an end this weekend, when Senator Lindsey Graham died just two days after turning 71. His office now says the cause was a rupture in his aorta, tied to hardened arteries, with a final determination still awaiting toxicology and microscopic testing, replacing the earlier, vaguer explanation of a “brief and sudden illness.”
Graham spent his final hours the way he’d spent most of his career, deep in foreign policy and a phone call away from the president. Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press that Graham called him Saturday night after returning from Ukraine and “sounded a little bit tired, but perfect,” a detail that reads very differently now.
That closeness took years to build, and it certainly didn’t start smoothly.
Graham once called Trump “unfit for office,” and Trump answered by reading Graham’s cellphone number aloud at a campaign rally. The rift traced back to Trump’s comments about John McCain, Graham’s closest friend in the Senate, and it took McCain’s own advice, that a senator has “an obligation” to help a sitting president succeed, before Graham finally came around.
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Once he did, the loyalty held firm for good. Graham became one of Trump’s steadiest defenders through two impeachments, a sharp reversal from his role prosecuting Bill Clinton decades earlier. Even January 6 only briefly tested the bond. Graham delivered a forceful Senate floor speech that night, declaring “Enough is enough,” before returning to Trump’s side within months.
Foreign policy, though, remained where Graham left his clearest mark. He’d just wrapped his tenth trip to Ukraine, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called him “a true defender of freedom.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went further still, saying, “Israel has lost one of its greatest friends.” Graham was also among the loudest voices behind Trump’s confrontational stance on Iran, once defending a shaky ceasefire by saying he’d “rather try diplomacy than take it off the table.”
Back home, his influence ran just as deep.
As Senate Budget Committee chairman, Graham helped Republicans push major legislation through on party-line votes, and he’d previously steered Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation as Judiciary chair. Democrats, for their part, didn’t only see an obstacle in him. Senator Dick Durbin called him “an indispensable player” in bipartisan talks, while Senator Richard Blumenthal admitted the sanctions news left him stunned that Graham could have been unwell at all.
Tributes since have leaned on one word again and again. McMaster called him “irreplaceable.” George W. Bush remembered a man who “understood how the world works.” Jaime Harrison, who ran against him in 2020, recalled that even bitter rivals could still find “a laugh, and a mutual respect.”
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
