‘He’s irreplaceable’: How Lindsey Graham made an indelible mark on foreign policy and Trump

By Lauren Fox, Morgan Rimmer, Annie Grayer, CNN

(CNN) — Sen. Richard Blumenthal was stunned.

It was February 28, 2025, and he was watching on live television as a crucial bilateral meeting between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky descended into chaos.

Blumenthal knew he needed to call the only person he thought could put it all back together: Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Just hours before the meeting, Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Graham, a Republican, had met quietly with Zelensky at Blair House, just steps from the White House, to prepare the Ukrainian president for his high-stakes sit-down. No matter what happened in the Oval Office, Graham warned, Zelensky needed to remain composed, conciliatory and calm.

That is not what happened.

As the Ukrainians were asked to depart the White House, Graham went to the mics and reprimanded Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian president “either needs to resign and send somebody over we can do business with, or he needs to change.”

But behind the scenes, Blumenthal said Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina, was already thinking about how to repair the damage and get a relationship he’d spent years helping build between Zelensky and Trump back on track.

“He just never gave up on this cause,” Blumenthal said.

In the weeks since Graham’s death, Republicans have confronted the reality that there will be no replacing Graham when it comes to foreign policy or as a conduit to Trump. And that has left many in the GOP grappling with the direction of their party’s foreign policy, with hawkish voices now far less common and a critical link between the White House and Capitol Hill gone.

Graham’s own hawkish views – shaped by his late mentor Sen. John McCain – and his close relationship with the president meant he was perhaps the last Republican interventionist able to permeate Trump’s non-interventionist, “America first” platform.

“It’s not about Graham’s views. It’s about that Trump-Graham chemistry,” Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, said. “I think that is a unique chemistry and not one that will likely be repeated.”

In more than a dozen interviews, lawmakers said Graham acted as his own State Department, international attaché and, often, US ambassador to whatever country he happened to land in that weekend, all while enjoying a direct line to the president. Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, said Graham traveled so often that he once saw his senate colleague unfurl a sleeping bag on the floor of a military aircraft.

“You could tell he knew what he was doing,” Kelly said.

Graham did not take many breaks – instead converting congressional recesses into opportunities to meet with foreign leaders. That meant his death was marked by just as many remembrances from global heads of state as it was by condolences from colleagues. Graham had spent his final days in Ukraine, hours before his death.

For likeminded Republicans, Graham’s position in Trump’s inner-circle was key.

“I think he served as a counterbalance as some of the other people around the president that don’t share that view. So, I think that’s going to be the biggest loss for my perspective from a policy standpoint,” GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who worked with Graham on Ukraine matters, told CNN.

‘The linchpin’

Graham and the president weren’t always so close.

Graham bitterly campaigned against Trump in the 2016 presidential primary, saying the party should tell Trump to “go to hell,” and calling him the “most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party.” But when Trump won, Graham transformed into a strategic ally for the president on cable news, the golf course and Capitol Hill.

In return for his loyalty, Graham was able to inject his own influence on one of the issues that mattered most to him – foreign policy.

“He was the linchpin in so many conversations and so many moments,” said GOP Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama. “I mean, his relationship with the president, with Democrats, with Leader Thune, with the conference as a whole, and then you add on that his relationship with world leaders. There’s just nobody like him, and he’s irreplaceable.”

Graham lobbied the president to act on Iran at a time when many in Trump’s inner circle were wary that military intervention would push the US into an open-ended quagmire. Even as support waned, he continued to push the president to keep up his aggressive posture.

“I don’t trust Iran when it comes to enrichment, when it comes to the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium, it needs to be in our control. Those are the bottom lines of the president. The Strait of Hormuz needs to be open without any future interference by Iran,” Graham told reporters in April, defending Trump’s post on Truth Social threatening to end the Iranian civilization. “I’m afraid they’re going to drag it out, and I would urge the president to stick to the deadline, and if they can’t reach a deal acceptable to him, then he should finish the job.”

Graham, who visited Ukraine 10 times since the 2022 Russian invasion, also used his relationship with Trump to lobby on another top priority: ending the war there.

GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who has sharply criticized Trump over Ukraine policy, suggested that Graham’s behind-the-scenes advocacy for the US to help Ukraine played a critical role in steering the president.

“I always called him the Trump whisperer,” Bacon said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat who once took a 10-hour train ride with Graham to get to Ukraine, said Graham was an expert on the conflict. She said he was able to walk her through the streets of Kyiv block by block, noting which buildings had been bombed and when.

“The Ukrainians had lined up all of the Russian burned out tanks in the center of the main road so that everyone walked past them and saw the humiliation of the Russians who thought they were going to waltz in to Ukraine and own it in a handful of weeks. Lindsey was delighted by every burnt out tank,” Warren recalled.

Graham’s sanctions legacy

Fifteen months before his death, Graham and Blumenthal introduced an ambitious sanctions package that Graham declared would be a “sledgehammer” aimed at the Russian economy and President Vladimir Putin. The goal was to sanction members of the Russian government and its oligarchy, paired with blistering tariffs of at least 500% targeted at almost any nation that imported Russian oil and natural gas.

While the bill ultimately gained more than 80 bipartisan co-sponsors in the Senate, it stalled for over a year as the White House signaled the package did not have its support. Senate Majority Leader John Thune was clear: there would be no vote on the Senate floor until the administration signed off.

And if it was the president’s sign-off they needed, no senator was better positioned to get it than Graham.

“His understanding of the president, but also his seeming ability to influence him, again, made him a unique figure here,” Blumenthal said. “The combination of his alacrity in reaching across to Democrats, but also his continuing ties to Trump, were part of his unique role.”

There were moments during that year when Graham released statements promising they were close, but an official endorsement from the White House didn’t follow.

“He was often as frustrated with the president as any of us, you know,” Blumenthal said of Graham. “But he accepted it with good humor – not necessarily, maybe accepted is the wrong word, but he never abandoned the cause of the Russia sanctions bill because he knew it was the right thing, and he was totally dedicated to getting it done.”

On Friday, July 10, Graham wrapped up what would be his final international trip in Ukraine. He announced that he and his Senate colleagues had finally secured the White House’s endorsement of a sanctions package.

“We reached agreement with the White House on a version of the Russia sanctions bill that they will support,” Graham said as he stood before tanks in the streets of Kyiv. “It means it is gonna become law.”

A day later, Graham died.

Colleagues looked to pick up his work as they paid tribute to his memory.

“I’ve known this man for 32 years, and I’m willing to say this: this is Lindsey Graham’s greatest achievement,” Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker said of the Russian sanctions bill at a press conference just days later.

Britt, the Alabama senator, shouldered some of the responsibility as senators released the painstakingly negotiated text of the new package.

The updated text dropped the tariff levels to a maximum of 100%, as determined by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. It targeted the top five importers of Russian oil and natural gas, with exceptions for nations that were taking steps to lessen their dependence on Russian energy.

“He taught me so much. Look, he was so gracious in allowing me to have a seat at the table, many times of which it would have taken me years to get there on my own,” Britt recalled of Graham.

The package still faces hurdles. Not every senator is on board yet. Some Democrats are raising concerns with handing the administration more tariff authority. And the Senate only has a few more weeks in session ahead of the November midterms as they face a looming government funding deadline.

But Thune and the bill’s cosponsors say they are committed to passing the package, which they plan to name after Graham.

‘A unique personality’ and a slew of bipartisan friendships

If you ask a member of Congress about Lindsey Graham, they will probably tell you two things: He had an uncanny ability to disarm just about any situation, and you could never be sure where his antics were headed.

That was the case in early 2015 when a bipartisan delegation of senators traveled to Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia to talk to as many stakeholders as they could about the Obama administration’s negotiations on the JCPOA, a nuclear deal with Iran that Trump later abandoned.

Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, said that on the last day of the congressional delegation trip, the senators arrived in Tel Aviv at the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, to meet with its then-head, Tamir Pardo. Kaine said the lawmakers were escorted to a conference room that had “a full bar with every drink you could get,” an espresso machine, soft drinks and alcohol.

“It’s a very serious meeting on a very serious topic. And when we walk in, Lindsey is kind of in the lead, and Pardo goes, ‘Good to see you, Senator Graham. Can we get you anything to drink?” Kaine recalled. “And Lindsey just goes, ‘You’re the effing Mossad. You should know what I want to drink.’”

Kaine said the group was a bit taken aback by Graham’s response and nervous it was about to backfire.

“There’s this kind of embarrassed pause, like, you know, why is Lindsey starting the meeting off this way?” Kaine said.

Then, Kaine said, one of Pardo’s lieutenants chimed in, “Coke Zero, sir.”

It was this kind of brash-yet-disarming charm that senators said Graham deployed all the time.

Bacon recalled meeting Graham while serving as a colonel in Baghdad in the early 2000’s, and said he appreciated that Graham – who served in the Air Force Reserves – wore his uniform when visiting with troops.

“I appreciated a senator getting in the reserves and going to the war zone. I mean, I felt like that it’s really leading by example, and he could have taken the easy way out, but no, he went to Iraq for a couple weeks at a time, I was grateful,” Bacon said.

“Lindsey had a unique personality,” Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said. “He’d say something funny or for him off color, and he would change the whole attitude of the meeting.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said this was key to his relationship with the president. “He was beloved in the United States Senate, and he was beloved by Donald Trump. I got to say, the relationship Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump had — I’ve never seen anything like it. It was extraordinary. They would disagree nine times and still be laughing and loving each other and working together on a dozen other issues.”

Blumenthal agreed that Graham’s wit was central to his work. “I differed with Lindsey Graham deeply and profoundly on major issues, but part of his personal role was to bridge differences, or at least work around them.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, who frequently joined congressional delegations abroad with Graham, said he could see “a couple of first and second term senators” in the Republican conference who could try to compensate for the loss of Graham. “But the amount of time and effort Senator Graham put into traveling overseas and building relationships and working with Democratic senators, that’s going to be hard to replace. Very hard to replace.”

Sen. Kelly argued it couldn’t just be one person: “It would have to be two.”

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