Over the course of his three terms representing South Carolina in the Senate, Graham had become predominantly known for two things: extreme hawkishness on foreign policy, following the lead of his close friend and mentor, the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, and a bipartisan streak that resulted in high-profile attempts to cut big deals on issues like immigration reform and climate change.
This was not a fiction. It was documented. Graham and McCain were genuinely close — close enough that Graham was a constant presence on the trail during McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. They traveled together to Munich for the Security Conference every year. They pushed for military intervention together, for Ukraine support together, for NATO commitment together. They were the face of a Republican foreign policy tradition that believed in alliances, in institutions, in the basic premise that the United States had to lead the world rather than extort it.
A former senior staffer for a Democratic senator who has worked alongside Graham on bipartisan legislation described him: “Like John McCain, he was a conservative Republican, but it was always worth asking where he was going to be on a particular issue, because he wasn’t completely beholden to party orthodoxy. He’d often be way out ahead of his staff, negotiating on the Senate floor unbeknownst to them, and they would be playing catch-up.”
That was the Graham who mattered. That was the Graham who had genuine relationships across the aisle and genuine credibility on the issues he cared about. That was the Graham whose endorsement meant something because it wasn’t guaranteed.
That Graham is gone.
The Funeral He Didn’t Attend
Trump mocked John McCain. He mocked his capture. He mocked his five and a half years of torture in a Vietnamese prison camp. He said he preferred people who weren’t captured. He said this about a man who turned down early release because other prisoners hadn’t been released before him — a man who was offered freedom and refused it on principle while his captors beat him. Trump said he preferred people who weren’t captured.
Graham called Trump a jackass for it. In 2015. Before the election. When Graham still apparently had a line he wouldn’t cross.
After the election, Graham crossed it. He crossed every line, one by one, watching Trump mock his best friend’s legacy, watching Trump attack McCain at rallies attended by people chanting “traitor,” watching Trump refuse to honor McCain in death with the dignity his service deserved.
Steve Schmidt, who ran McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said: “With regard to the cruelty and abuse that was directed at John McCain by Trump, I think Lindsey’s flaccidity in defending him says a lot about his character. Nobody wants to be in a bar fight when they go out on Friday night. But when someone walks up and punches your best friend in the face, you’ve got to do something. Lindsey has demonstrated he’s the guy who runs out the door.”
Graham’s former law partner in South Carolina, Larry Brandt, was comparably blunt: “Lindsey, in my opinion, has sold his mother to keep his job.”
The Kavanaugh Inflection Point
Graham’s poll numbers were sinking in South Carolina. He was being seen as too moderate, too deal-prone, too willing to work with Democrats. And then Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings happened, and Graham stood up in the Senate Judiciary Committee and delivered a performance of theatrical fury that went viral, and his polls jumped 21 points.
As one observer put it, Graham “has a ‘count to six’ approach to governing: He spends the first four years of a term reaching across the aisle, then he spends the last two years campaigning for himself.”
The Kavanaugh moment taught Graham the lesson he needed to learn. Anger plays. Loyalty plays. Trump plays. Bipartisanship, in the age of Fox News primary politics, is a liability. The man who had spent decades building cross-party relationships watched his numbers jump twenty-one points the moment he performed maximum partisan fury on national television, and he drew the logical conclusion.
Some South Carolina voters are mystified by Graham moving from such a close friendship with McCain to his current relationship with Trump. Real estate agent Melinda Nicholson, a Democrat who had voted for Graham every time he ran: “It’s like he’s Trump’s minion, and I don’t like that.”
The Ukraine Betrayal
Graham had spent years as one of the Senate’s loudest advocates for Ukraine. He and McCain traveled to Kyiv. He railed on the Senate floor. He pledged support repeatedly and publicly.
Republican and Democratic senators who worked for years with Graham were fuming over his decision to oppose a $95 billion defense and foreign aid package. One GOP senator said: “Lindsey gets a pass on so many things because the answer is, ‘That’s just Lindsey.’ But that doesn’t seem like that’s a sufficient answer. He’s so mercurial.” “It’s annoying. It’s tiresome. Generally when a person gets to a place, you expect him to stay there.” “This is out of character for the issues he has championed for a long time, issues that he and McCain worked on side by side.”
Why did Graham flip? Some saw Graham as making a blatant effort to curry favor with Trump, who lobbied senators to oppose the package to deny President Biden a political win.
He abandoned Ukraine — the cause he had championed for years alongside the friend he claimed to honor — because Trump wanted it abandoned. He dropped off as co-leader of the Senate delegation to the Munich Security Conference — the conference he had attended every year with John McCain — because the politics required it.
The North Star
“I’m his north star,” Graham told NBC News in February 2026. “We disagree, but he knows where I am coming from. He sees me helping him as much as anybody in the Senate.”
North star. The fixed point by which navigators orient themselves. The thing that doesn’t move. Lindsey Graham has told us he is Trump’s north star — the constant, the guide, the reliable point of reference in the sky.
The man who called Trump a jackass and predicted the beginning of the end of his campaign has declared himself Trump’s north star.
Graham won his primary in June 2026. Trump endorsed him. Graham thanked Trump publicly. Graham is on his way to a fifth Senate term. The system, from Graham’s perspective, has worked exactly as intended. He traded the reputation he spent thirty years building for five more terms of incumbency and the approval of a man who once read his cell phone number to a crowd of thousands.
His former law partner said he sold his mother to keep his job. His former colleague’s campaign manager said he’s the guy who runs out the door when someone punches his best friend in the face. His Republican Senate colleagues called him annoying and tiresome. The voters who had supported him for decades started voting for his opponents.
And Graham told NBC News: I’m his north star.
John McCain was captured in Vietnam. He refused early release. He was beaten. He endured. He came home. He spent the rest of his life in public service and he died fighting a brain tumor with the same stubbornness he brought to everything else. He was Lindsey Graham’s best friend and mentor and the model around which Graham built his entire political identity.
And the man who mocked McCain’s capture is now Graham’s north star.
That’s the whole story. Everything else is footnotes.