As condolences and remembrances of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham pour in from around the world, several themes are emerging from the South Carolina lawmaker’s life. One was that he loved his job. Graham served as a senator for 23 years and as a member of the U.S. House for eight years before that. He made politics a passion that endured shifting partisan tides and four different presidents. No matter who sat in the Oval Office, Graham made sure he was in the room, and he reached new heights with Donald Trump.
“You understand over the arc of time, just be steady, be focused. I think I deliver for the conservative cause,” Graham told me in an interview on the South Carolina campaign trail in April. “I think the longer you’re in, the more challenges you get. This would be my fifth term, you get scar tissue. You make people mad, but I trust the voters to understand that I feel that what I have to offer to South Carolina is at its highest peak.”
Graham traveled a bumpy path to get to his level of power and influence before his heart gave way on Saturday. Hours before, he was on the phone with staffers, international advisers, fellow senators, and the president of the United States.
“Trump is a political animal, and so was Lindsey Graham, and I think they really connected on that level,” Conservative Partnership Institute and former Senate staffer Rachel Bovard told RealClearPolitics. “They just enjoyed being together. They both knew that Graham wanted to get his priorities across the finish line, and he knew Trump could do it. And where they were aligned, there was no bigger advocate for the president than Graham.”
Another theme is that he cared deeply about America’s role in the global order and invested much of his time in foreign policy. After a 33-year career as an Air Force prosecutor and defense attorney, Graham believed strongly in using military power to advance American interests.
A third is that he was part of an evaporating breed of politicians: old school gentlemen who would debate and argue by day – and then crack jokes well into the night over dinner with their political opponents.
“The thing that I think was really magical about Lindsey is that he really didn’t take this stuff personally,” Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina Republican, told RCP. “You could go into a throwdown and be on the opposite side of some issue, and the next week you're talking about something you’re working together on. He was the kind of spirit around here that I’ll miss.”
Graham’s detractors often claimed he was simply a politician grasping for power, changing his policy stripes like a chameleon when it suited him. But his supporters kept electing him, endorsing him, and cutting deals with him exactly because of that. To Graham it was all part of the game.
“It’s an evolution. When you first get yelled at, it unnerves you,” Graham told me. “You’ve got to be willing to accept criticism and have some self-evaluation. Sometimes I get it wrong, but I’m just confident, confident in the people, confident that I have a good story to tell, and I’m going to tell it.”
From upstate South Carolina to Capitol Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Graham told plenty of stories.
President George W. Bush campaigned for Graham in 2002, after longtime Sen. Strom Thurmond announced his retirement leaving a rare vacancy for the state. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Bush said then-Congressman Graham would be a much-needed ally.
“I’ve got a lot to do in Washington. And we need somebody who can help get that done in the United States Senate from South Carolina,” Bush told voters in Greenville. “He understands how Washington works. I want the voters of South Carolina to remember: he was for a strong military prior to September the 11th. He understood we need a strong military to defend our freedoms. He doesn’t need to be educated, once he gets to Washington, on this issue.”
Across administrations, Graham was known as a foreign policy hawk. His critics liked to say he never met a war he didn’t support. Graham argued that he never met a country that didn’t need to know the United States’ power. When it came to international affairs, he was more a proponent of the stick than the carrot.
Graham supported the Iraq invasion in 2003 and Bush’s use of Guantanamo Bay for terrorism prisoners. His relationship with the White House changed with President Barack Obama. In 2015, Graham was one of 47 Republican senators who signed an open letter to Iranian leadership, warning them not to sign a nuclear deal with the Obama administration. What became the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action removed many economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for monitoring on Iran’s nuclear program. The letter pointed out that it was an executive plan that any future president could revoke, which President Trump subsequently did.
Did partisanship play a role? Graham’s detractors certainly thought so. When President Obama invaded Syria in 2013 without seeking congressional approval, Graham called it “about the most mismanaged situation I’ve ever seen since World War II when they were trying to control the Nazis.” When Trump launched strikes last year against Iran, seized Venezuelan dictator and president Nicolás Maduro, and started a months-long “kinetic activity” in Iran again, Graham defended him. The day after Trump gave a national address on Iran, Graham was thrilled.
“[Trump] called me, and I said, ‘You look like the president, you sounded like the president, and you gave a coherent explanation as to who we’re dealing with, why we had to do it, and how it is,’” Graham told me at the time. “It’s up to the Iranians. You can’t end this war without controls on their ability to regenerate; they come either through diplomacy or further military action. We’re not going to invade Iran, but we’re going to cripple this regime’s ability to become the largest state sponsor of terrorism ever again through diplomacy.”
An institutionalist to his core
Graham often defended the separation of powers even as he worked a line between Congress and the White House. Even during Democratic presidencies, Graham conceded the executive’s right to have their own appointees installed. He also reminded his fellow Republicans to respect authority. At a 2010 AIPAC conference, Graham said, “Barack Obama is my president, and I pray for him every day.”
Despite his spats with Obama, Graham was also a frequent negotiator with the White House. He worked on a climate and energy bill and joined an immigration reform coalition. On the campaign trail, Graham urged members of his own party to disagree respectfully.
“To those people who think Obama’s a Muslim who was born in Kenya, I lost you a long time ago,” Graham told CNN in 2015. “There’s a dislike of Obama in my party that’s unhealthy, there was a dislike for President [George W.] Bush in the Democratic party that was unhealthy. He is my president.”
“We disagreed, but we weren’t disagreeable about it,” former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told Face the Nation this week. Emanuel said the two men worked together on the rules for the 2008 presidential debate between McCain and Obama, a 2009 national service bill, and on the effort to close Guantanamo Bay.
Graham’s critics tended to divide their remembrances of him as pre- and post-Trump. In a post on X, Hunter Biden said he chose only to remember the version of Graham he saw before Trump took office. But Graham also recognized a pre- and post-Trump era in politics. And as always, he took the side with more power.
“Lindsey Graham was about getting things done for his constituents and for his ideological priorities,” Bovard said. “He knew that the best way to get his goals accomplished was to align himself politically with the people that could help him get it done, and that’s what he did for years. And he was the best at it.”
Graham voted to confirm both of Obama’s appointees to the Supreme Court: Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. The vote gave him credibility when he shouted at Senate Democrats for trying to derail Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 nomination by bringing in a woman who leveled a hazy and uncorroborated sexual misconduct accusation against him from their high school years.
“When you see Sotomayor and Kagan, tell them Lindsey said hello, because I voted for them,” Graham told Kavanaugh at a fiery confirmation hearing. Then he turned his attention from Kavanaugh to Democrats on the committee. “I would never do to them what you have done to this guy,” he thundered. “Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it!”
If Graham felt betrayed by his Democratic colleagues, there was a reason. Mike Davis, former chief counsel for nominations to the Senate Judiciary Committee while Graham was on the committee, said he was surprised by how often Graham would work Democratic members for votes even when the GOP majority didn’t need them for a nominee.
“I saw Lindsey Graham working with Democrat senators repeatedly, both as a top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee when I was there, and then later as the chairman,” Davis, now president of the Article III Project, said in an interview. “His outrage during the Kavanaugh hearing that he became so famous for was genuine. I think it was where he finally understood that we’re not dealing with [former California Sen.] Dianne Feinsteins anymore. We’re dealing with a new Democrat party.”
But Graham also played partisan politics. He obstructed many of Obama’s nominees in protest of the administration’s handling of the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack. He sided with Mitch McConnell in 2016 to prevent Obama’s appointee Merrick Garland from even getting a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, arguing that new justices should not be chosen in an election year. Then in 2020, Graham sped through a hearing and vote for Amy Coney Barrett one month before the election. The following week, Democrats won control of the chamber.
Graham is most known for his about-face on Donald Trump, a man he called a xenophobic bigot and a disaster for the party during the 2016 campaign and then supported the day after the election. Graham was quick to shed his own presidential ambitions and board the MAGA train after November 2016. By 2026, the two had racked up plenty of phone calls and golf outings. Even the White House was surprised by the change.
“Here we are, working on policy every day together,” White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security Stephen Miller told reporters on Tuesday. He said he got to know Graham during the 2024 campaign.
“The term career politician is typically a pejorative in America … I probably use it as a pejorative as much as just about anybody, but there’s such a thing as a noble career politician, and that’s what Lindsey was,” Miller said. “Lindsey was a person whose chosen vocation, whose chosen path in life, was to be a politician in the best and highest and noblest sense of the term. … The fact that he became one of the most important allies of President Trump and MAGA and the America First movement in what now turned out to be the last act of his career is such a fitting tribute to the man.”
During the first Trump administration, Graham was particularly influential on the Judiciary Committee. By the second, he had his hand in just about everything. Last year, he oversaw the creation and passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, a reconciliation package that passed with only Republican support. He also frequently advocated for Trump on Iranian strikes and supporting Israel. The two were not always on the same page about Ukraine, but Graham was at least in the room.
Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, shared in a social media video his memory of when he first asked Graham to work on a criminal justice reform bill. At the time, in 2013, Graham said to wait until after his primary. Then, he got to work. In a video Booker posted after Graham’s death, he said he learned a lot about Graham’s tenacity. Booker recalled that a White House negotiator at the time called Graham “an unguided missile. He never knew which way he was going to go, whether he would come back and hit you. But when he was aligned, when he would be in the right place at the right time, man, he could get things done that other people couldn’t.”
In memoriam, lawmakers reckoned with such incongruencies.
“I think Lindsey Graham enabled President Trump to do horrific things like dismantling USAID but also was an adult in the room, at times fighting against this president and his worst inclinations,” Booker told RCP. “But all of us human beings, all of us, are mountain ranges. We all have peaks. We all have valleys … but I will always remember Lindsey Graham as a guy who helped, in many ways, me understand the workings of the Senate and taught me again the importance of fighting like hell.”
As soon as Trump was on the way out after his first term, Graham adapted yet again. After rioters had been removed from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Graham broke up with Trump: “Count me out,” he said. “Enough is enough.” And the following week, he made up with the outgoing president and said he was only referring to the electoral counting process, not Trump.
The Biden years were no less incongruent.
“He’s a good man, even though he’s a Democrat, Graham told his nieces in 2015 when then-Vice President Joe Biden held a ceremonial swearing-in for Graham’s reelection.
As co-senators, the two had a pattern of yelling at each other on the Senate floor by day and then heading out to dinner. They worked together on national security and foreign policy resolutions. In an interview with the Huffington Post in 2015, shortly after Beau Biden’s death, Graham called then-Vice President Biden “as good a man as God ever created, and we don't agree on much, but I think he's been dealt a really gut blow.”
By 2020, the relationship had soured. Biden called Graham a “personal disappointment” on Stephen Colbert’s show. Jill Biden said they used to be close friends and bonded on foreign trips, but that he had changed. Graham agreed. In 2021, he told Fox News that his friendship with Biden could not continue after a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan that cost American lives. But a New York Times profile later that year reported that Graham had called Biden after the 2020 election and tried to repair their relationship. According to anonymous sources, Graham had said he only attacked Biden’s son, Hunter, to mollify the MAGA base. A Graham spokesman disputed the report.
“We disagreed often, and sometimes loudly,” former President Biden said in a post on X after Graham’s death. “Lindsey and I did agree on the profound importance of public service. Like me, he loved the Senate as an institution, even with all its flaws and complexities.”
Thom Tillis said Graham had tried to give him advice on his embattled relationship with the president.
“Not sharing what [he said],” Tillis told RCP. “Lindsey and I spent a lot of time talking, and I do believe that a part of the relationship that I have up to this point with the president is probably founded on some insights into me that maybe Lindsey shared with him at some point, because we’ve managed to maintain a reasonable relationship in spite of me being on the leaderboard for probably disagreeing with him more than most Republicans.”
But no matter who was in the Oval Office, Graham’s sweet spot was the United States Senate.
“I mean, you talk about gold: having Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio in the cloakroom at like 1 o'clock at night, sharing stories, laughing, and joking,” Tillis said. He said that if the White House is looking for another well-connected senator to grease the skids for their agenda, they’ll be looking for a long time.
“I think he was one of a kind,” Tillis said. “It’s remarkable how, if you look at all the tumult between him and the president, how strong their relationship was and how kind the president was about talking about Lindsey and his passing. That’s a real skill to do that.”
Graham himself chalked it up to self-confidence. He told me that he knew who he was, what he wanted, and didn’t care about criticism.
“I choose to go about my life,” he said then. “I’m hard to bully. I’m very focused. I have a lot of confidence in who I am and what I believe.”
Although he did not know it at the time, Graham’s sweeping Russia sanctions bill would be his congressional swan song. Graham had been working with Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, for two years on a bill designed to cripple Russia’s economy and turn off the funding spigot for its war against Ukraine. Last weekend, he was in Ukraine and received word that the White House was finally on board. He called Blumenthal on Saturday.
“Sen. Graham and I were told very authoritatively, literally just probably hours before his death, that the White House was okay with it,” Blumenthal told reporters on Tuesday. “We were exultant. He was as exuberant and over the moon as I’ve ever seen him. And he said, ‘This is a big effing deal. We all did good.’”
If enacted, the bill will impose mandatory sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, political and military leaders, state-owned enterprises, oligarchs, and foreign companies that partner with Russia. It would also impose up to a 100% tariff on the top five countries that purchase Russian oil. With Russia’s economy already teetering, Graham was hopeful the sanctions would bring about an economic end to the war in Ukraine. On Thursday, senators renamed the bill the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026, which hit 60 co-sponsors this week.
Some Republicans hope that Graham’s legacy will provide the final push to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, commonly called the SAVE America Act. The proof of citizenship and photo identification bill has been stalled in Congress for more than a year, despite broad Republican support. Democrats have argued that it would add burdensome regulations for many Americans. Trump said on “Meet the Press” that Graham told him in their final phone call “We’re all set for the SAVE America Act.” Graham was a co-sponsor of the bill but resisted Trump’s push to override the filibuster to pass it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune began speculating this week about how Graham might have passed the bill.
“Perhaps what Lindsey was talking to the president about – I don’t know this for a fact – [was] whether or not there was an option for reconciliation, and there is a way in which I think you could [do that],” Thune said in a New York Post interview.
Earlier this year, the Senate parliamentarian already struck the SAVE America Act from a reconciliation bill because it did not pertain to the budget. Thune said that adding financial incentives could pass the stringent requirements for reconciliation, which allows a simple majority vote.
Meanwhile, South Carolina voters will hold a special election on a rushed timeline to install the next senator in the new Congress in 2027. Graham handily bested several primary candidates earlier this year, including former Trump administration staffer Paul Dans and Greenville businessman Mark Lynch. Both called Graham a warmonger, made insinuations about his sexuality and bachelorhood, and promised to be a more “America First” candidate. Graham won his primary campaigns for nearly three decades easily. But he told me in April that politics had turned more aggressive.
“If one of these guys somehow got the nomination, every Republican in the country would suffer because they’re so hateful and so out of the mainstream,” Graham said. “Politics is tough business. How you conduct yourself says a lot about what you really, actually believe.”
Graham’s office confirmed today that there will be three funeral services: one in Washington on Tuesday and two in South Carolina on Wednesday.
