Graham cozies up to Trump
WASHINGTON — Three times in a single day last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham’s cellphone rang. The first time, President Donald Trump called about the health care fight in Congress. The second time, the president thanked the senator for defending his honor on television. Then Trump rang seeking more intelligence on health care.
Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, was a one-time target of the president’s barbs on Twitter. He has transformed himself into the Senate’s Trump whisperer, shrugging off the White House chaos, personal insults and deep ideological differences in exchange for Trump’s ear.
The metamorphosis of Graham from chastised to cheerleader is all the more striking as his best friend and longtime mentor in the Senate, John McCain, R-Ariz., moves in the other direction, defiantly standing against the president as he battles brain cancer. And it comes as other senior Republican senators who share Graham’s long-held beliefs in an activist foreign policy and toleration toward immigrants challenge their colleagues to condemn Trump and his inwardlooking “America First” views.
Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said Tuesday that the president was “debasing” the country. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona blasted what he called the president’s “reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior.” Both lawmakers have said they will retire from office rather than continue to work with Trump.
Graham — who worked with Flake on immigration and Corker on foreign policy — said he shared those “concerns about what the president says and how he behaves.” But cozying up is the better choice, he said.
“I’m going to try to stay in a position where I can have input to the president,” Graham, 62, said. “I can help him where I can, and he will call me up and pick my brain. Now, if you’re a United States senator, that’s a good place to find yourself.”
To Republican critics of Trump, Graham is risking his reputation with such a calculus.
“Lindsey Graham knows better,” said Peter Wehner, who advised former President George W. Bush and is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. “Deep in his heart, he must know that Donald Trump is fundamentally unfit to be president, and he has to pretend that Trump is. And when you engage in a game like that, there’s often a cost to it.”
Graham is willing to take the risk. Twice in the last two weeks, he has been the president’s golf partner. (Trump is better, he says.) There have been one-onone huddles in the Oval Office. And two days before the series of phone calls last week, Trump brought Graham along for a 15-minute helicopter flight from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to the White House after a trip aboard Air Force One.
Few people ever get to join the president on Marine One. Likely no one has been invited to fly as a guest aboard the presidential helicopter after calling the commander in chief “the world’s biggest jackass,” as Graham once said of Trump. (Trump, then a candidate for the White House, responded by calling Graham “an idiot.”)
Some Republicans said they were not entirely surprised by Graham’s embrace of the president.
“He’s being very pragmatic,” said Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican consultant who is also an outspoken critic of Trump’s, adding that the senator was engaged in “a delicate dance.”
“I don’t give him any demerits on supporting him where they agree on policy,” Murphy said.
Looking ahead, Graham envisioned working with the president on issues as varied as an immigration overhaul — Trump has “credibility no one else has” — and a minimum-wage increase, which Graham says he intends to introduce when the Senate considers revamping the tax code.