Bulwark Takes - Lindsey Graham Died. Trump Used It To Attack Nikki Haley.

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

Sam Stein and Will Saletan reflect on Senator Lindsey Graham's sudden death at 71, tracing his shift from Trump's fiercest critic to loyal ally, and critiquing Trump's self-centered, tone-deaf response to the news.See Will Saletan's series on Lindsey Graham here: https://specialto.thebulwark.com/Become a Bulwark Youtube Plus Member here - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG4Hp1KbGw4e02N7FpPXDgQ/join

Hey, everybody. It's me Sam Stein Managing at the Bullwark, and I'm joined by Will Salatin here on July 12th. It's a Sunday recording around 3 p.m. this morning in the early hours of the morning. Senator Lindsay Graham passed away. The news you probably heard by now. His office has said it was a quick and immediate and obviously dire health condition. And that's basically all we know about what happened. There's been some video footage of our photos of ambiences showing up at his place, going to the hospital. But that's it. Lindsay Graham was 71 years old. He'd been a center for quite a while. He'd been a politician for longer than that. It was in the House in South Carolina. Had several memorable moments in his career and several different chapters in his career.

And there's been a lot already written about him and said about him, but I was eager to hear from Will Salton about this because a few years back, Will wrote a fairly definitive series on Lindsay Graham for the bulwark called The Corruption, of Lindsey Graham. Well, you've covered his career and you dove into his career probably as extensively as any reporter in Washington, D.C. And it's a lot to unpack. Like I said, there's just different versions of Lindsey Graham, different chapters of his life and of his politics. But with that

being said, I am curious. What's your takeaway of the legacy that he has left? Boy, first of all, I'm condolences to his family, his friends, people who loved him. It's really sad, I think, the story of Lindsey Graham. He was 10 years ago when Donald Trump first showed up and was running for the Republican nomination for president. Lindsey Graham was the person who stood up to Donald Trump. It's hard for young folks who may not know this history to understand this. But Lindsey Graham was the person who said that Donald Trump was a race-baiting, xenophobic, demagogue, a bigot, that he was a danger to the Constitution and the Republic.

Lindsey Graham was right about all of this. And as Donald Trump accumulated power, first winning the Republican nomination for president, then the presidency, Lindsey Graham is the person who most changed to become moved from Donald Trump's worst critic to his best friend, defended him through all of Trump's corruption, and through one stage after another, as Donald Trump demonstrated more and more corruption and pushed more and more lines, Lindsay Graham stood with him. And to me, Sam, the tragedy of this early death is that Lindsay Graham didn't get even the thing that he sold out for. Can I read you?

I just want to read you one quote from Lindsey Graham. This is 2015. I believe this is December 2015 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A reporter asks, at this point, Trump was starting to consolidate power in the Republican presidential race. And this is what Lindsay Graham said to his party. He said, let your fear go. folks, as Republicans, stand up for what makes us great. Tell Donald Trump, you're wrong. Don't be afraid of him leaving and losing an election, us losing an election. I'm not afraid of losing an election,

said Graham. I'm afraid of losing our soul. That's what Lindsay Graham said verbatim at the time. Then Lindsey Graham proceeded to sell out to Trump. And what he sold out for was some influence on Trump's foreign policy, but also keeping his job. Lindsey Graham, so if I take you to election night 2020, Donald Trump is losing. Lindsey Graham is winning. Lindsay Graham has six years in front of him. He could have Sam at that point said, that I separate myself from this man and I want our party to be new because he had six more years. He decided to help bring Donald Trump back.

And Sam, this term that Lindsey Graham was about to have because he was going to win, this is what it was all for. all the work he did to bring back Trump and the further sellout. And he's not going to get it. And that is, I don't know how to describe how poignant and tragic that is for him and for our country. Yeah, I want to think back to pre-Trump Lindsey Graham. And then I want to think to post-Trump, Lindsay Graham, because I think that's a good bifurcation.

The pre-Trump, Lindsay Graham was someone who folks remember was very good friends of John McCain and Joe Lieberman. They were the three amigos. They used to go around, very hawkish foreign policy, which I will say he continued to this day to have a hawkish foreign policy. But they also were moderate in certain ways, most particularly on immigration. Lindsay Graham was supportive of the Dream Act, even though he was opposed to birth racism. He was involved in all those gangs. Remember when the gangs in the Senate was a thing, when there was a big crisis and the senators had to get together and talk about a solution.

Lindsay Graham was always involved in those, and I think part of that was because, because he wanted to, or he idolized, I should say, John McCain. And he always had to have some sort of figure that he looked up to as an inspiration. And for a while, it was McCain. And McCain had an independent streak. And then Trump came in. And in some ways, I think Trump kind of replaced McCain as the figure that Lindsay had to look up to. The post-Trump, Lindsay Graham was, like you said, I think, pretty committed to his political survival.

So people probably don't remember this. But Donald Trump gave out Lindsey Graham's cell phone number at a political rally. I just literally read it out loud and listed it. And Lindsey Graham had to get rid of his cell phone because of Donald Trump had to get rid of the cell phone because everyone was calling it, including myself. And yet he's stuck with Trump. But I think the biggest post-Trump memory I have is Lindsey Graham. And you said 20-20 he could have gotten rid of him. And he seemed like he was really close.

There's that sort of famous remark that he gave in the well of the Senate after January 6th where he said, I'm out. I'm done. Yeah. But he wasn't done, obviously. It was a compromise he was willing to make on his own morality, or his own morals, I should say. Was it all about survival for him, political survival? Yeah. So, Sam, that period is really interesting because I think a lot of people have developed a misunderstanding or a false memory of what happened. So Lindsay Graham gave that speech, I mean, remembers. He said in the speech, this is right after the January 6th, it's not January 6th. He said, I hate it to end this way. I've supported Donald Trump. I hate it to end this way. And he said, count me out. And people thought he was abandoning Trump. He was never abandoning Trump. He was saying, I hate that Trump's first term ended, ended this way. And count me out, he was not going to vote to overturn the election. But he was already talking to Trump about bringing him back. And in fact, If you go back through the historical record, November 9th, a few days after the 2020 election,

Lindsey Graham is on Brian Kilmead's radio show. And he says to Kilmead, he's talking to Trump through this broadcast. And he says, you know, Mr. President, don't you want to have a second act? So why don't you wind this thing down in a way that you can have? And then Lindsey Graham, behind the scenes and publicly, worked with Trump to bring him back so that by February of 2021, he's Trump is speaking. He's the featured speaker at CPAC, and Lindsey Graham is basically telling all the other Republicans

get out of the way. Trump is coming back. So during that period, Lindsey Graham did everything he could to arrange a second term. This second term that Donald Trump is having is very much on Lindsey Graham's ledger, morally and otherwise. And everything Donald Trump is doing in the second term

is things that he said he would do, and Lindsey Graham defended him in the course of that. So I guess the question everyone has when grappling with Graham is which one was the real Graham, right? Like, did he actually believe the stuff he believed in prior to Trump or is there a consistent threat here? There is a consistent threat. And I want to, so look, there's going to be a lot of nice things said about Lindsey Graham that are not true or exaggerations. It's going to be some mean things said that are not true. I spent so much time getting in the side of this guy's head. There is a real Lindsey Graham. There are things he believes in. There are things he didn't sell out. And that is foreign policy.

Lindsey Graham is a hawk. And Donald Trump was very much an isolationist. And Lindsey Graham did bring Donald Trump along. It's not an accident, Sam, that we have invasions of Venezuela and then Iran under this president who said he wasn't going to do that. Lindsay, Mitch McConnell, a bunch of other people, the hawks, they got their way with this president in terms of getting him to intervene, getting him to believe that this whole, taking me. away nuclear weapon was worth a war and all of the damage that it's caused. So I would say, and oh, sorry, I shouldn't forget to mention Ukraine. Lindsay Graham was just coming back from Ukraine. And in fact, Trump was speaking today on a couple of the Sunday shows and he talked about

how Lindsay was just back from Ukraine, but Trump wasn't really interested in the Ukraine part. Trump says, oh, Lindsay called me last night. We were talking about the Save America Act. And Sam, that is the classic tradeoff that Lindsay Graham did. Here is a domestic thing that Donald Trump cares about. I'm going to give him that. I'm going to work with him on that. And meanwhile, the thing I'm working on in the background is what I care about, which is continuing aid to Ukraine. So for people who think Lindsey Graham sold out everything, that's not true. He did still work for those causes he believed in. We're going to get to the Trump thing in a bit, but I want to talk about my only real experience with Lindsey Graham on a sort of direct level,

which I think does get to the ways in which he changed, or at least abandoned principles that he held. So this was 2016. You mentioned that he was running for president against Trump. And he is a third-tier candidate to say the least. I think he was running for president just because he was like, I think he even me, he's like, I just knew I wanted to try once to run for president in Z.O. He knew he wasn't going to win, but he wanted to at least just how.

have the experience. So he was doing all these things and riding around. Honestly, it was like the lowest thrills campaign possible. It's just like, you know, no money, get in the car, go. And I was at Huff Post at the time. And we were doing a video series, which was very, you know, cutting edge at the time for a news outlet to do video series. Who does video, right? But we did a video series with one of our reporters, Scott Conroy, who a great guy, great reporter, Scott wanted to do a kind of docu series on all the presidential canons where he would go on the road with them and he would, you know, film them and we'd bring a crew and all and stuff. And people might remember the other famous clip from this moment was Chris Christie talking, I believe, about, I forget what it was. It was about something about like depression and something like that and it went viral.

But this was the original viral clip from that series, which was called 16 and president. Scott went down and was hanging out with Lindsey Graham in the back of a car, and they're on the way to a bar, some campaign event in his home state of South Carolina, I believe. And they got to talking about Joe Biden. And Bo Biden had just passed recently. So they get to talking. And this like really sort of vulnerable moment happens that you rarely get with a politician where he just is sort of riffing about what's on his mind. And he starts tearing up a little bit. And let's play the clip, and I'll talk on the other side of the clip about this experience,

and then what happened. If you can't admire Joe Biden as a person, then it's probably you've got a problem. You need to do some self-evaluation because what's not to like? Here's what I can tell you, that life can change just like that. Don't take it for granted. Don't take relationships for granted. I called him after Beau died. And he basically said, well, Beau was my soul.

We've taught for a long time. He came to my ceremony and said some of the most incredibly heartfelt things that anybody could ever say to me. And he's the nicest person, I think, I've ever met politics. Is that right? He is as good a man as God ever created. So that's stuck with me, obviously. I mean, stuck with a lot of people. It's been played. That clip's been played a lot.

One of the reasons it was played a lot is because Lindsay Graham was totally fine with Donald Trump savaging of Joe Biden. In fact, he enabled it. He was never said a word of protest, probably participated in it to a degree. He was cruel. He allowed cruelty to happen to this person who he said was the finest soul that he had ever met. And I could never get over that. I mean, here he is. He's preaching about how relationships matter so much, and you shouldn't take them for granted. And he just allowed one of his relationships to be completely tarnished

for political expediency. And it's, to me, that was about as bad as you can get in politics when you do something like that. It just takes all the humanity out of it and means it's just a game. I will say this, though, Lindsay, that was a great moment. It made me think at the time very highly of the guy. And it showed an empathy that I thought was missing from way too many people. Later that night, Scott Conroy was with Lindsey Graham at a bar. And they let Lindsay behind the bar to serve drinks because he's a

presidential candidate. It seems pretty cool. And I think maybe they had one too many drinks. And I get a call from Lindsay Graham. And I didn't, I didn't recognize the number. I just led to go to voicemail. But Scott had convinced him to call me to talk about how great this whole experience was. And so I get this voicemailman, like, hey, Sam, it's Lynn Graham. I just wanted you know, Scott Conroy was a great reporter. You got to give him a raise, all this stuff, keep him on the road. And I was just like, this guy is just having a good, jolly time. And he is human. I was like, this is a human being. But in the end, after, that's 10 years ago.

And I look back at that now and I wonder, like, what happened? Like, why was that human being so absent for the past 10 years? Where did that empathy go? And it really feels to me kind of sad, honestly, that we didn't get that human being, that he was just sort of a different type of creature by the end of it. Yeah, Sam, I think that you've really captured there this, this poignant disjunction between the Lindsey Graham, who was speaking in private, who knew better and what he did in public. You know, we have these debates sometimes in politics and political journalism about how we judge politicians. They can do good or evil, but they can also have in them good or evil.

And when someone has a career of gradual corruption, which is what I think Lindsay Graham had, one of the questions, is is it worse to never know the difference to just be a brute like Donald Trump? Or is it worse to be someone who has a soul and clearly shows that he understands right from wrong, good from evil, as Lindsey Graham did in that clip? And I'm not going to try to settle that debate for anyone, but I do want people to take away from what you just showed us who Lindsey Graham was. He was someone who had a heart, had a soul, knew better, and there's a public record of him saying all of that stuff before Donald Trump came in.

There's also a record, often off the record, of him saying, as he did in, I think, 2019 about Donald Trump, to other reporters, because he spoke to reporters off the record. Often he said, called Donald Trump a lying MF. He knew what Donald Trump was, and he still supported him, and he enabled him, and he defended him through all of the worst. And I want people to appreciate how bad the worst of Lindsey Graham was after the 20th. 2020 election. Lindsay Graham, number one, went out and lied about the election, talked about all, claimed it was election fraud. Number two, pressured other Republicans, pressured Brad

Raffinsberger on the phone to try to throw out 40,000 ballots. Disgusting, absolutely disgusting behavior. Threatened Brian Kemp that he would lose his job if he didn't, like, call a special session and overturn that. And number three, Lindsay Graham used implicit threats of violence. He said, do not impeach Donald Trump or there will be, we don't want any more violence. There will be violence if you do that. He later said that if Trump were prosecuted for his mishandling of classified documents, there will be riots in the streets. Lindsay Graham said that twice. He was using, he was raising the threat of violence in our republic to prevent accountability for an authoritarian. The fact that he did that after being, after showing the kind of humanity that you just showed us,

is just wrenching to me. And I think it reflects well on him as a human being, but it reflects very poorly on his actual behavior as far as it concerns, as far as it addressed and affected our republic in the world. Yeah, well said. All right, so Trump did go on the shows today or he phoned into the shows today

to talk about Lindsey Graham. Trump does this thing, and you can judge it however you want, but he definitely like handles the, the death of public figures differently than a lot of other people have. So, like, he puts out these tweets or bleats or whatever when they die, like seemingly making the announcement of their death, right? Like, he did this once with, like, he didn't die, but like, Larry Cudlow had a heart attack once.

And Trump was like, Larry Cudlow just had a heart attack. And it was like, okay, like, that's, you don't need to send that out to the world. He did that this morning with Lindsey Graham. And then he went on the shows to talk about Lindsay Graham. I don't know, man. I don't know. Meet the press is the one I watched. You watched it too.

I have some thoughts about what it says about Donald Trump because he didn't say that much about Lindsey Graham, honestly. But what did you make of it? Well, he talked about Graham, just having come back from Ukraine and talking about the Save America Act. He talked about, you know, what a great guy, Lindsay Graham, was it, helping Trump get Democratic votes for various things and how Graham was always with him, because that's what Trump remembers. Are you with him?

And he did talk about, he said, I'm just going to read one thing he said on Meet the Press. He claimed that when he endorsed Lindsey Graham, he said to Graham, quote, the reason I'm endorsing is because I got to make sure you win, because if you didn't win, I don't think you could handle life. I don't. He said about Graham, you know, there are guys that can lose and they go into something else. I can't imagine him doing anything else. So Trump knew that Lindsay could not abide losing in a lot. election. And that was leverage that Trump always had over him. Let's play the clip.

I got a call last night sometime at, you know, the early evening, maybe in the sevens. And he called and he said, we're all set for the Save America Act. He was pushing the Save America Act like crazy. He got back, said he just landed from Ukraine. I said, that's a long trip to make. He said, he sounded a little tired, but perfect, but a little bit tired. I had a right to be. And he was a worker. He was really a a worker. But he sounded great, actually. But he was, he actually said he was tired.

But he wanted to pass the Save America Act. He just loved being a politician. I said, the reason I'm endorsing you is because I got to make sure you win, because if you didn't win, I don't think you could handle life. I really don't. He was a man, you know, there are guys they can lose, and they

go into something else. I can't imagine doing anything else. He was so intense. I mean, he literally called me about the Save America Act. That's why he's, you know, that's where I heard. Think of it. He's traveling for many, many hours.

That's a long flight. That's a long trip. And he, you know, calls me about the Save America Act. He thought we were going to get it past. Do you remember the very? This is a big, this is a big blow to the Save America Act. Let me tell you. Sam, tell me, what did you see in the, meet the president?

Well, so to me it was, it really was like sort of, First of all, again, I don't want to be too judgmental about it because everyone handles this stuff differently. But it was like kind of an odd interview tonally, right? It was like it didn't feel like it wasn't much like sadness about it. It was just so like, oh, it was unfortunate. He was such a good politician. Don't think he could have done anything else in his life, as you mentioned.

And then he started like getting into kind of like discursive takes on, you know, Lindsay's leg, not even his legacy, just like, I don't know. It was like he kept talking about how, you know, he endorsed Lindsay Graham and Lindsay was going to coast to election. And then the conversation kind of veered towards, well, should we get the Save America Act passed? And then it was like sort of like, well, who's going to replace him? He's like, well, Henry McMaster's a governor in there. And I also endorsed him. And he won.

And, you know, I did, because I wanted to get Nikki Haley. He didn't mention Nikki Haley. Basically, it's like, I won Nikki Haley out of there. And so I gave her the UN ambassadorship. And we could play that. Let's play it. It's nearly impossible to think. think about replacing Senator Lindsay Graham, and yet the governor of the great state of South

Carolina is going to need to appoint someone on an interim basis. There will also be a special election called. Do you have, I know it's only hours, but is there someone you think he should appoint? Is there someone you think he will have? I have somebody that I think would be great, but I don't want to say it now because it just, you know, it's too soon with Lindsay. I don't want to even talk about anybody, but I do have somebody that I think is really good. The governor is a good friend of mine. I've endorsed him. I endorsed him early on, and he endorsed me right from the beginning as a person that never did this before. In 2016, he came out and very strongly endorsed me, and then I made up for it. I removed somebody from office that I didn't think was

so good, moved her over to the United Nations. 95% of that, of my doing that, because the United Nations job was not exactly tough. Yeah, it could be very important, but, you know, she was okay at it. But I did it because Henry McMaster was the lieutenant governor. And by moving her, I got myself a great, really a great guy. Henry McMaster has been a really good governor, really good guy. And, you know, that position cleared out. And Henry's been a great governor.

You know, now he's termed out. But he's going to do the right thing. And so, like, I don't know. It's like, it was supposed to be, you know, a 10-minute interview about Lindsay Graham. I ended up talking about the Save America Act, ended up talking about the power of Trump's endorsements, ended up talking about how great Henry McMaster was because Henry McMaster knew early on that Trump should be backed in 2016. It was just like, again, it was just, it felt like it was less about Graham and more about Trump. Yeah, well, this is the way a narcissist doesn't obituary, right?

Oh, yeah, there you go. This is classic Trump. So, yeah, it was the Lindsay was going to win because I endorsed him. That, like, so it's about me. And that Lindsay was with me from the beginning. He actually wasn't with me from the beginning. But the point is, you know, like that's why I care about the guy. The same way Trump, when he goes to a state, he only says, did they vote for him or not?

That's like, this guy died. And the thing about Haley, Sam, that was beautiful. Like, I mean, sorry, it's ugly, but it's, you know, beautifully illustrative of Trump. Yeah. here. Out of nowhere, out of nowhere. Nowhere. He just decides to backhand her and say, I only gave her this job because I wanted to get her out of the way. Who does that when somebody just died? It was nutty. I mean, just go on there and be like he was a great guy. I'm going to miss him.

It's horrible. Like, tell a couple of good stories about Lindsay Graham. Like, don't use it as like a platform to push the Save America Act and bash Nick Haley. It's just tacky stuff. Okay. Well, look, thank you for jumping on and talking about it. Lindsey Graham, I really appreciate it. A complicated figure for sure. Although maybe not all that complicated in the end. Maybe it was as simple as he wanted to survive politically and knew how to do it because in the age of Trump, it's just being close to Trump and you're Republican.

He basically made a very quick calculation and stuck with it. And that was that. But, well, thank you so much. People should read the piece that he did a couple years ago for the bulwark. It's called The Corruption of Lindsay Graham. And you should subscribe to the feed. We get honest, thoughtful conversations just like this. Take care, buddy.

Thanks, Sam.