Lindsey Graham Is Dead—and So Is the GOP’s Margin for Error
The man who was everyone in Washington died Saturday night. The Senate he leaves behind is about to find out what his vote—and Mitch McConnell’s—were actually worth.
by Cliff Schecter
Lindsey Graham spent Friday in Kyiv, shaking Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hand on his tenth wartime visit to Ukraine. He spent Saturday evening on the phone with Donald Trump. By Sunday morning he was dead at 71, and Trump was on Truth Social telling the world it “could’ve been his last call”—because of course the unholiest, emptiest, piss-sack-of-a-man has to even make others’ obituaries about Donald Trump.
There it is, folks. Graham’s whole career in thirty-six hours.
One of best things he ever did, honoring his onetime posture as a serious man who understood and fought for crucial international relationships and institutions. And the newer, lesser Lindsey. The one who couldn’t wait to call his prom date afterwards, for what became one last low-minded conversation with the gaudy, jingoistic jester to whom he ultimately sold his stature and legacy the last decade of his life.
The first in line with the far-from-perfect, but-at-times useful moderate-conservative he was (see his onetime push for immigration reform, #MeToo legislation, and more). The other, soulless, MAGA-adjacent jackal talking to Trump about God only knows what.
Stacked back to back like a closing argument.
I’m not going to pretend to grieve, and I’m not going to dance, either. A man died suddenly at 71, and the people who loved him deserve their mourning. But Graham was a United States senator for twenty-three years, and senators get judged, not eulogized, by the likes of me. So let’s judge.
Which Lindsey Are We Burying?
The thing about Lindsey Graham (R–Wherever You Need Him to Be) is that there was never one of him. Washington’s oldest running joke was asking which Lindsey would show up that day, and the answer was always the same: it depended on the wind.
December 2015, on CNN: Donald Trump was a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” May 2016, on Twitter:
Seven periods in that ellipse. Count ‘em—that’s how sure he was of his proclamation. Then Trump won, and Lindsey discovered that the bigot had a lovely golf swing and an open seat on the cart. One trip to the golf course and Lindsey was all in. There was speculation it was kompromat—the Russians did hack RNC servers in 2016, they just never released those emails like they did those of former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
And if we’re going to be honest—and that’s my belief in these situations—there were longtime rumors Graham was gay, which followed him as closely as he once followed Senator John McCain. I obviously couldn’t care less, as long as his personal need for secrets didn’t undermine national security secrets. I don’t need to know the why of what made this mouse-y, oleaginous, camera-loving man act so oft-disingenuous in recent years. I just know he did, and with it wrecked any respectable place for him in history’s telling of this age, following the decade-long tradition of #ETTD, or Everything Trump Touches Dies.
In 2016, while helping strangle Merrick Garland’s nomination in the crib, he begged us:
I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died forty-six days before the 2020 election. Graham rammed Amy Coney Barrett through the Judiciary Committee and onto the Court eight days before Election Day, with millions of ballots already cast. Without a hint of irony or apology—but the honesty you’d find in an email from a Nigerian prince stranded on a road near Abuja, 100% ready to wire you a quick million if you send him $100 and share your bank account.
And don’t forget your Social Security number so he can make the payment!
This is all to say we used Lindsey’s words against him. Turned out words were never the point.
In November of 2020 he personally called Brad Raffensperger—Georgia’s Republican secretary of state. Graham had no earthly business calling as the senior senator from South Carolina about Georgia’s ballots—and Raffensperger came away from the call saying Graham had floated tossing legally cast mail ballots. Read that again: Graham wanted Raffensberger to erase your vote—your constitutional inheritance in this country—so his dominatrix Donald would be pleased.
Let’s put it in plain English: Lindsey, a man for whom fainting couches were seemingly invented for his drama-soaked, tears-of-a-clown routines—like the one he performed for paragon of integrity, Brett Kavanaugh—was a-ok stealing an election for Donald Trump. Graham said that’s not what he meant. It never was, with Lindsey. (And be sure to never forget poor, suffering Brett, forced to endure as women he allegedly assaulted were allowed to tell their stories in public hearings).
Meanwhile, Lindsey never that tweet. It just sat there like a time capsule of a better time. And less confused of a man:
Then there was January 6, 2021, from the Senate floor. Lindsey being Lindsey. Where he previously zigged, now zagged: “Count me out. Enough is enough.” As in, he was finally donning his galoshes to climb out of the giant shit-pit he’d chosen to inhabit with the traitor Trump.
That conviction had the shelf life of of a Graham Platner candidacy. Within weeks he was back at Mar-a-Lago kissing Trump’s rather bulbous, bloated arse. And by 2024, he was endorsing the guy he blamed for a coup attempt against the United States of America.
And through it all, the ghost at the edge of the frame was John McCain. Graham spent two decades as McCain’s wingman—the closest he ever got to conviction. Trump claimed McCain wasn’t a war hero because he got captured. Yet Graham watched this bone-spurred, feral hog spit in his best friend’s face, and later on his grave (in 2019, after McCain had passed away, Trump ordered the USS John McCain “out of sight” during a state visit to Japan, where it was stationed).
From that…….Graham concluded the smart play was to carry Trump’s golf bag.
Also, if you’ll indulge me for a second, as someone who wrote a book on John McCain (“The Real McCain”). I found a lot to criticize about the man as a politician. Even as a person. But I always, and I mean always, defended his honor as a soldier. A soldier who chose to remain in captivity and endure God-only-knows-how-much-more torture, because when the Vietnamese discovered McCain’s famous name (both his grandfather and father had been/were highly decorated U.S. Navy Admirals) they wanted to release him, and only him. He told them to shove it, he wasn’t leaving without his men.
In other words, this critic of John McCain more vociferously defended his military honor than his onetime great friend. If you want a single image of what happened to the Republican Party, that’s the one.
Credit Where It’s Due—and I Mean It
Now we continue with my earlier promise. Honesty.
