Lindsey Graham, Republican senator who switched from fierce critic of Trump to staunch ally

Lindsey Graham, who has died aged 71, was a Republican senator whose allegiances were built on shifting sands.

For many years he was close to John McCain, his fellow Republican senator from Arizona, the two of them being known as moderate voices of conscience in Washington. Yet in a remarkable display of moral contortionism, Graham later threw his support behind President Trump – having once been one of his fiercest critics.

First elected to the US House of Representatives in 1994 and to the Senate in 2002, Graham was a foreign policy hawk. He sought the 2016 Republican nomination for presidency and during that election campaign described Trump as “a nut job and a jackass”. He told CNN: “You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell… He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.”

Graham and McCain, meanwhile, were a powerful Washington double act with a personal and professional relationship spanning more than two decades. They collaborated on foreign policy and while they disagreed on healthcare, Graham said that their friendship was “not based on how he votes but respect for how he’s lived and the person he is”.

To the horror of many Republicans, Graham worked with President Obama on climate change legislation and immigration reform, becoming a scourge of the Tea Party, whose members labelled him a “Rino” (Republican in Name Only). Graham was unabashed, telling The New York Times that he wanted to see a Republican leader who, like Ronald Reagan, “can attract Democrats”.

But whereas McCain emerged as a leading Republican dissenter during Donald Trump’s first presidency before his death in 2018, Graham’s moral compass appeared to change direction. Finding himself on the wrong side of American popular opinion, he performed one of the most abrupt U-turns in political history. He and Trump began playing golf, speaking frequently on the phone and singing from the same political hymn sheet.

Where once Graham had spoken out against Trump’s agenda of building a wall, he now advocated a wall; having opposed revoking birthright citizenship, he now insisted that he had “always” supported restricting the citizenship rights of immigrants’ children; and where he had defended the independence of the judiciary, including Robert Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election, he now wanted an investigation into anti-Trump bias in Mueller’s team.

Asked whether Graham had sold his soul to the devil, Hillary Clinton replied: “I don’t know. That’s a fair question, however.”

Graham’s change of tack was the subject of much speculation. Was he an opportunist playing all sides? Had he been blackmailed by Trump? Or was he demonstrating “unadulterated, wet-noodle incompetence”?

The senator himself was unapologetic, claiming that, far from being a matter of principle, his change of heart stemmed from a pragmatic desire to remain relevant. “If you know anything about me, it’d be odd for me not to do this,” he told The New York Times.

Lindsey Olin Graham was born in the small textile-mill town of Central, South Carolina, on July 9 1955. He was the elder of two children of Florence James “FJ” Graham and his wife Millie, née Walters, who ran the Sanitary Café, a liquor bar, burger joint and pool room on Main Street. Segregation prevailed and while black drinkers could purchase beer, they had to drink it outside.

There was no air conditioning but the Sanitary Café did have a phone that local wives used to track down their husbands. When Lindsey was nine, a woman called asking for one of the regular drinkers. “Hey, Fred. Your wife’s on the phone,” Lindsey yelled at the customer, who replied: “Tell her I’m not here.” Returning to the phone, young Lindsey declared in all innocence: “Fred said he isn’t here.” Many years later he still chuckled at the wife’s reaction. “Bottom line is: I learnt diplomacy in that bar,” he recalled.

Graham was in his early 20s when his parents died 15 months apart, leaving him legal guardian of his 13-year-old sister Darline. He was educated at DW Daniel High School in Pickens County, read psychology and law at the University of South Carolina and was commissioned into the US Air Force, coming to public attention with an appearance on 60 Minutes after exposing the US military’s flawed drug-testing programme.

In the closing years of the Cold War, he was posted to Germany as a military prosecutor, dealing with every type of crime involving US service personnel, from rape and child abuse to drugs and murder. He was also involved in espionage cases, stepping through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin.

The experience cemented his view that America must remain the world’s leading military force and that President Reagan was right to hold firm against the Soviet bloc. Back in the US he worked in the family courts but was recalled to active duty during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990-91, briefing US pilots on the laws of war.

He was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1992 and two years later succeeded Butler Derrick, the retiring Democrat, in the US House of Representatives. He unsuccessfully challenged Newt Gingrich for House Speaker in 1997, advocated impeaching President Clinton for perjury in 1998 and in 2002 succeeded Strom Thurmond, who had represented South Carolina for almost half a century, in the Senate. He held the seat in 2008, 2014 and 2020, and had been due to stand again in November with Trump’s endorsement.

He did not cook and was said to be incapable of operating a coffee machine or a can opener. Yet he operated as if on adrenaline, booking back-to-back meetings, giving speeches and travelling the world to inspect America’s hegemony. “Big issues rattle from his brain and out of his inert, somewhat glassy-eyed face as if dispensed by a gum-ball machine,” noted one profile. He was a strong supporter of both Israel and Ukraine, and in the hours before his death had returned from a meeting with President Zelensky in Kyiv.

Lindsey Graham, born July 9 1955, died July 11 2026​

[Source: Daily Telegraph]