Lindsey Graham Infuriated and Charmed His Critics

C onsider that, just a decade ago, Lindsey Graham was a dyed-in-the-wool opponent of Donald Trump. The self-described “wingman” of the late Senator John McCain ran in the Republican presidential primaries of 2015 and called Trump “the world’s biggest jackass.” Trump, in turn, gave out Graham’s cellphone number at a televised rally and prompted so many people to call it that Graham had to destroy his phone. In the 2016 election, Graham voted for independent Evan McMullen, a “Never Trumper” who won 0.56 percent of the national vote.

Flash forward to today. By the time of his death, Graham had become one of the leading defenders of President Trump. Slate called him “an Olympian bootlicker.” Graham laughed it off: “I like him, and he likes him.” More seriously, he explained his pivot to the New York Times Magazine in 2019, saying: “From my point of view, if you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this.” By “this,” he meant “to try to be relevant.”

“I’ve got an opportunity up here working with the president to get some really good outcomes for the country.” Graham was candid enough to admit that sticking with Trump could be “a wild ride.” In an interview with me, he joked: “Every day with Trump is Christmas. Sometimes there’s a shotgun under the tree, that’s good. Sometimes it’s that sweater you hate. But there’s always something under that tree.”

It was his candor and humor that allowed Graham to charm a Beltway press corps that clearly detests Trump. Conservatives were also forgiving. Jon Fleischman, a popular California political blogger, recalls walking up to Graham to challenge the senator’s stance in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. “Within a few minutes, he had me laughing,” he wrote. “What I remember is the cadence, the timing, the sheer force of personality that turned what I’d expected to be a sharp confrontation into something genuinely hilarious.”

But Graham’s easygoing nature masked a lifelong, fierce, and unrelenting ambition. His upbringing was about as humble as one can imagine. His parents raised him in the back room of a then-segregated bar in rural central South Carolina. He took baths with water that had been heated on the bar’s stove, and he shared the facilities with customers who worked at a nearby sawmill. At age twelve, he worked on the pool tables in the bar’s recreation area. He insists that it “was a great way to grow up” because he became a sort of child mascot to the bar’s longtime customers and learned a great deal listening to them expound on the lessons of life.

Neither of his parents had finished high school. Graham was a mediocre student but made it to the University of South Carolina — the first in his family to go to college. He was heartbroken when both his mother and father died within 15 months of each other, at just about the time he graduated. “I felt assured my parents knew what I had achieved, and that it was because of them, of all they had done for me, that I had succeeded beyond our dreams,” he wrote in his autobiography in 2015. The death of his parents meant that Graham had to do some fast growing up. He became the legal guardian of his 13-year-old sister.

Graham went to law school and joined the Air Force, where he served as a defense attorney and as the Air Force’s chief prosecutor in Europe from 1984 to 1988. He returned to the U.S., went into private legal practice, and was soon inspired to go into politics by Ronald Reagan. In 1992, Graham decided to run for the South Carolina state legislature by financing most of his campaign himself. He won. Two years after he entered the state legislature, the local congressional seat opened up, and Graham ran for it. He won again. Only three years later, Graham achieved nationwide attention when he served as one of the House’s impeachment managers in the Senate trial of President Bill Clinton.

The notoriety of the Clinton impeachment helped raise Graham’s profile and allowed him to fill his campaign coffers. In 2002, when incumbent Strom Thurmond retired at age 100 and created the first open Senate election in South Carolina since 1954, Graham stepped up. Graham once said the voters of South Carolina are used to electing a new senator only every 50 years or so, and he expected to serve into his 80s. In the end, he served four terms before dying at age 71, having achieved worldwide recognition for his efforts on behalf of U.S. allies such as Ukraine and Israel.

In an interview I conducted with him last year, Graham looked back on his career with satisfaction and gratitude. “I thank the Lord and my parents that I’ve done pretty well for being just a cracker named Graham.”