{"id":396,"date":"2026-07-13T20:39:38","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T20:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=396"},"modified":"2026-07-13T20:39:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T20:39:38","slug":"lindsey-grahams-greatest-delusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=396","title":{"rendered":"Lindsey Graham\u2019s Greatest Delusion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sen. Lindsey Graham died on Saturday, and the main mystery of the last decade of his life is why he grew so loyal to\u2014so enamored, even worshipful of\u2014Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Read more The Supreme Court Isn\u2019t Even Trying to Hide Its Worst Trait Anymore<\/a><\/p>\n

Throughout his four terms as U.S. senator, Graham was an avid supporter of NATO and distrustful of Russia\u2014while Trump has railed against allies and cozied up to Vladimir Putin. In the 2010s, Graham formed coalitions across the aisle for compromise legislation on climate change and immigration reform\u2014while Trump has derided the former as a hoax and the latter as a danger. Perhaps most jarring of all, Graham was best friends with the late Sen. John McCain, often traveling with him on foreign trips (they and Sen. Joe Lieberman were known as \u201cthe three amigos,\u201d in playful homage to the movie of that title)\u2014while Trump repeatedly insulted McCain, even berating his war record, both before and after he died. (One of McCain\u2019s last wishes was that Trump not be invited to his memorial service.)<\/p>\n

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In the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign, Graham denounced Trump as a \u201crace-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot\u201d and said, \u201cYou know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.\u201d He later said that he voted for third-party candidate Evan McMullin rather than cast a ballot for Trump or Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

But his tune changed after Trump unexpectedly won.\u00a0Before and after, during Trump\u2019s first and second terms, Graham stood by Trump constantly, defending his views even when they differed from his own. Even on Ukraine, which Graham has strongly supported in its fight against Russia\u2019s invasion, Graham backed Trump\u2019s switch from military aid<\/em> to loans<\/em> and even defended his conduct in the February 2025 Oval Office meeting in which Trump publicly blasted Volodymyr Zelensky for insufficient gratitude, saying he had \u201cnever been more proud\u201d of his president and urged the Ukrainians to unseat Zelensky as their president.<\/p>\n

How to explain all these twists and turns?<\/p>\n

On one level, it\u2019s no mystery at all. Graham himself clearly explained his reasons. In a February 2019 New York Times interview, reporter Mark Leibovich asked the same question\u2014why this safe-seat senator, who had once been so critical of Trump, was now his most loyal ally. Graham replied: \u201cWell, OK, from my point of view, if you know anything about me, it\u2019d be odd not to do this.\u201d He defined this<\/em> as trying \u201cto be relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so, in coddling Trump, praising his judgment, dropping all criticism, offering him advice as a princeling to the king, and joining him on endless rounds of golf, where the flattery can be finessed as friendly conversation, Graham became a member of Trump\u2019s inner circle. \u201cI have never been called this much by a president in my life,\u201d he said, in a tone of wonder. \u201cI went from \u2018OK, he\u2019s president\u2019 to \u2018How can I get to be in his orbit?\u2019 to \u2018How can I have a say in what\u2019s going to happen today, tomorrow, and next week?\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another factor: Trump is popular in Graham\u2019s home state of South Carolina. He lost little political standing by standing with the president. \u201cIf you don\u2019t want to get re-elected, you\u2019re in the wrong business,\u201d he said in the Times interview.<\/p>\n

But this leads to another question: Besides getting reelected (which probably would have happened in a predominantly Republican state anyway), what did Graham get out of his subjugation? How much did his \u201csay\u201d really matter in what Trump actually did from day to day?<\/p>\n

Graham may well have influenced Trump now and then, not always for the better. By all reports, he certainly reinforced the president\u2019s inclination to join Israel in attacking Iran this past February. (To the extent his lobbying mattered, it will remain among Graham\u2019s most dreadful legacies.) He may also have kept Trump from abandoning Ukraine altogether; it seems one of his final deeds was to persuade Trump to support his bill to strengthen sanctions against Russia.<\/p>\n

It could also be that Graham came to understand what sorts of arguments would most appeal to Trump. For instance, back in 2019, during Trump\u2019s first term in the White House, Graham helped dissuade him from withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria not by outlining the geopolitical rationales, as the Cabinet secretaries had fruitlessly done, but rather by displaying a map showing all the oil that could flow through Syria. This was nonsense, and Graham knew it; oil played little role in anything concerning Syria at the time. Yet it sold Trump on keeping the troops.<\/p>\n

Read more How Comedian Tim Heidecker Turned Alex Jones\u2019 Conspiracy Empire on Its Head<\/a><\/p>\n

Then again, the ploy worked for only a little while. Not long after the map trick, Trump returned to his original stance and ordered the withdrawal\u2014which was widely seen as a betrayal of the Kurds, who had been vital in the war against ISIS, opening them up to be crushed from the north by Turkey.<\/p>\n

If Graham had been half as effective a Trump whisperer as he pretended to be, American support for Ukraine would be less equivocal, allies in Europe and Asia wouldn\u2019t be justifiably worried about America\u2019s reliability as a guarantor of their security, and maybe some professional diplomats\u2014not Trump\u2019s clueless son-in-law and real-estate chum\u2014would have been appointed to negotiate in talks over Ukraine and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

In their 2021 book Peril<\/em>, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa uncover a broader angle on Graham\u2019s ponying up to power. From their portrait, obviously based on many interviews with the senator, Graham is fully aware of the foolishness in so many of Trump\u2019s words and deeds. But he keeps coming back for another phone call, another round of golf, another floor speech displaying the depths of his subjugation because, in his mind, the Republicans can\u2019t win the next election without Trump\u2014and yet they also can\u2019t win unless Trump changes, so Graham keeps trying to change him.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d Woodward and Costa write, as if paraphrasing Graham\u2019s thoughts, \u201cthere was no changing him. You just kept the conversation going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is this what Graham\u2019s sellout was all about? Did he inhale too deeply the vapors of power? Was he too rapt by his proximity to the most powerful man in the world? (He wouldn\u2019t be the first politician to swoon in response.) Or was his quest for power rooted in sheer petty selfishness? In his 2020 presidential memoir A Promised Land<\/em>, Barack Obama skewered Graham for his repeated betrayals and runarounds. \u201cYou know how in the spy thriller or the heist movie, you\u2019re introduced to the crew at the beginning,\u201d Obama wrote. \u201cLindsey\u2019s the guy who double-crosses everyone to save his own skin.\u201d<\/p>\n

In any case, the sweep of his career reveals that Trump changed Graham more than vice versa. Graham\u2019s delusion on this score was palpable. In his interview with the Times\u2019 Leibovich, Graham noted that when his old friend McCain was facing reelection in 2010, he turned himself into \u201cthe most conservative member of the U.S. Senate.\u201d Leibovich wrote: \u201cThat was the race in which McCain claimed that he never embraced the \u2018maverick\u2019 label, and people were asking, \u2018What happened to John McCain?\u2019 Graham chuckled at the memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Graham omitted the real punch line to this story\u2014that, in the end, a year before he died, McCain cast the crucial nay<\/em> vote against Trump\u2019s measure to kill Obamacare. He rekindled Trump\u2019s burning hatred for that vote\u2014but also recovered a bit of his reputation as a principled politician.<\/p>\n

Graham shuttles off this mortal coil with no such vindication. Many are asking \u201cWhat happened to Lindsey Graham?,\u201d but nobody is chuckling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more What\u2019s Next for Maine Democrats After Platnerpocalypse?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The senator betrayed his principles to become Trump\u2019s biggest cheerleader. What exactly did he get out of it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[10,38,202,45],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war-stories","tag-donald-trump","tag-foreign-policy","tag-lindsey-graham","tag-senate"],"yoast_head":"\nLindsey Graham\u2019s Greatest Delusion - Home Move Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=396\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lindsey Graham\u2019s Greatest Delusion - Home Move Chronicle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The senator betrayed his principles to become Trump\u2019s biggest cheerleader. 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