Lindsey Graham is Despicable
I truly despise Senator Lindsey Graham. Anyone who would embrace and pay homage to someone who trashes your “supposed friend,” in order to “be relevant” is at best a hypocritical pragmatist and at worst an immoral sycophant. In this column I’m going to try and explain my contempt for Graham.
On August 28, 2018 a tearful Lindsey Graham took to the Senate floor to give an emotional farewell to his long-time friend and colleague, Sen. John McCain who died after battling brain cancer for 13 months. Here is some of what Graham said in his eulogy: “John taught us how to lose. When you go throughout the world, people remember his 2008 concession speech as much as anything else. There are so many countries where you can’t afford to lose because they’ll kill you. And John said that night President Obama is now my president. So he healed the nation at a time he was hurt. I learned that serving a cause greater than yourself hurts…He taught me that immigration as hard as it is to solve, somebody’s got to do it….He taught me that when good ignores evil, it may be convenient but it seldom works…I cry for a man who had honor…Honor is, in my view, doing the right thing at your own expense…You taught me what loyalty is all about.”
Sen. Graham’s actions since mouthing these words at Sen. McCain’s funeral have been the exact opposite of the way that Sen. McCain conducted himself. I have no doubt that John McCain is rolling in his grave at the way the “Little Jerk,” McCain’s nickname for Graham, is operating nowadays — devoid of what David Brooks in his book The Road to Character referred to as “eulogy virtues.” These are the attributes that according to Brooks “exist at the core of our being — whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed.” Instead of displaying these attributes Sen. Graham has repeatedly shown a lack of morality and personal integrity.
Let’s briefly review a little history. When Lindsey Graham was running for president back in 2015, he called fellow candidate Donald Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot,” a “complete idiot,” a “jackass,” and a “wrecking ball.” He urged GOP voters to tell Trump to “go to hell” and warned that if Trump did win the nomination, “that’s the end of the Republican Party.” In May 6, 2016, Graham announced he would not vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, saying: “I think Donald Trump is going to places where very few people have gone and I’m not going with him.
Then Trump got elected and in spite of him making highly derogatory disrespectful comments and having depraved thoughts about Graham’s friend John McCain’s death, including saying: “He’s not a war hero … I like people, who weren’t captured, okay?” Graham morphed into a sycophantic Trump bootlicker.
In a February 25, 2019 article for a New York Times Magazine article entitled “How Lindsey Graham Went From Trump Skeptic to Trump Sidekick”, Mark Leibovich interviewed Sen. Graham. Liebovich asked him how he became such a prominent Trump supporter. Graham responded that it was because he wanted “to be relevant.” ‘“I have never been called this much by a president in my life,” he told Liebovich His tone reflected a mixture of amazement and amusement, with perhaps a dash of awe. “It’s weird, and it’s flattering, and it creates some opportunity. It also creates some pressure.”” Graham went on to indicate that “I personally like him. We play golf. He’s very nice to me.” Graham also said that a good relationship with Trump would help his prospects of reelection to the Senate in 2020.” Clearly, Sen. Graham values access more than principles.
Up until recently there were some who thought that the one sacrosanct area that Sen. Graham would never give in on was his long-standing support of a strong national defense and aggressive interventionist foreign policy that was built on the notion that America had a role to play in preserving and defending democracy around the world, whether that be in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, or Ukraine. Even Graham’s critics thought that he’d be willing to go along with lots of “small” stuff that Trump obsesses over in order to build the influence to oppose him on “big” stuff like aid to Ukraine. What were they thinking?
The headline in a February 14,, 2024 Washington Post story made it clear that there is nothing sacrosanct when it comes to Sen. Graham acting on what he perceives as his self-interest: “Lindsey Graham, longtime foreign policy hawk, bows to Trump on Ukraine.”
“Grahams about-face on Ukraine aid sends a stark warning sign to U.S. allies…The longtime hawk dramatically announced on the Senate floor that he also would no longer be attending the Munich Security Conference — an annual pilgrimage made by world leaders to discuss global security concerns that’s been a mainstay of his schedule.”
“I talked to President Trump today and he’s dead set against this package,” Graham said on the Senate floor on Sunday, a day after the former president said at a rally that he would let the Russians do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies that did not spend enough on defense. “He thinks that we should make packages like this a loan, not a gift,” Graham said.”
The story further indicated that this episode and his backtracking on the border deal “eroded Graham’s credibility among colleagues who worked closely with him to shape a bipartisan package of border policy reforms that Republicans demanded be attached to the foreign aid in exchange for their votes.“
What is most surprising is that anyone who has watched the revolting transformation of Sen. Graham would be surprised that he became Donald Trump’s total lackey. Graham is a coward who is totally lacking in core convictions and all of the “eulogy virtues” that John McCain possessed. He has no policy agenda beyond getting attention and getting reelection. And with his current favorability rating in South Carolina hovering at around 30%, he’s already thinking about what he needs to do to get reelected in 2026.