Why Lindsey Graham Will Be So Sorely Missed

Where is Senator Lindsey Graham when you need him? The late, great South Carolinian, who is feted at Washington with two-day funeral services, was a friend to America’s allies Israel and Ukraine. The leaders of those countries flew over to pay a final homage to the senator. They also sat down on Tuesday with President Trump, who is suddenly uncharacteristically icy toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an admirer of the South Carolinian. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s relationship with Mr. Trump is on the mend. As our James Brooke reports, some of the president’s top supporters who were cool about Ukraine are now fans. Kyiv is receiving new American arms, even as Mr. Trump claims on TruthSocial that he’s selling the weapons to NATO allies, rather than directly to Ukraine. A “Lindsey Graham Act,” imposing new sanctions on Russia, is due to pass the Senate as early as tonight. Back in February 2025, Graham said that Mr. Zelensky “either needs to resign or send somebody over that we can do business with, or he needs to change.” That was after an infamous White House dress-down of Mr Zelensky. Quietly, though, the senator worked diligently to improve ties. Today Graham, who died July 11, a day after returning from his tenth trip to Kyiv since the 2022 Russian invasion, is a hero to all Ukrainians. The moniker “Trump whisperer” was widely used to describe Graham’s ability to defend the president over that clash with Mr. Zelensky — and then pushing Mr. Trump to repair relations with Kyiv. Vice President Vance, who has been the most vocal critic of Mr. Zelensky, was absent from today’s White House sit-down with the Ukrainian. In contrast, Mr. Trump pointedly invited the veep, an Iran war skeptic, to today’s session with Mr. Netanyahu. Before Mr. Netanyahu flew to Washington, Jerusalem leaked to the press that Mr. Netanyahu would present his host with intelligence on activity at Iran’s remaining nuclear facility, Pickaxe Mountain. “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that,” Mr. Trump told Fox News Tuesday in a dig seemingly designed to put to rest accusations that Mr. Netanyahu is leading America by the nose to a hopeless war. Is there a Trump whisperer in the house? A similar chill between Mr. Netanyahu and the American president was also widely reported when the Israeli visited the White House back in February. Two weeks later, though, America and Israel launched a war together. Our turning our backs to our top war ally now is noted across the region and beyond. Mr. Vance’s populist push to settle the war in negotiation seems to trump Mr. Netanyahu’s call to “finish the job” in Iran militarily. In any event, Graham was an Israel ally and a close friend to Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Trump “has been a great wartime president,” the late senator said in a recently-unearthed video. “Trump and Bibi are like Roosevelt and Churchill,” he said, adding that pushing to unite America and Israel in the war on Iran was “the best thing I’ve ever done.” Now even Ukraine is in this fight, hitting in the Caspian Sea an Iranian ship that carried arms to Russia.As Republicans who were cool to Ukraine are now fans and while Democrats and some right-wingers turn their backs on Israel, Graham’s even-keeled presence is missing and missed. The worldly senator could humor Washington’s non-interventionists — and he knew a foreign friend from foe. After telling Mr. Trump in 2015 to “go to hell,” Graham became a trusted foreign policy adviser and will be missed by Messrs Netanyahu and Zelensky — and Trump.

Why Lindsey Graham Will Be So Sorely Missed

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