Epic Fury Returns; Lindsey Graham, R.I.P; and A Week in Review
Ahh, but Richard, it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world if he should lose his soul… but for Wales, Richard?” — A Man for All Seasons
Lindsey Graham may have been a good man; perhaps he could have been a great one; but he chose to be Trump’s man.
This morning I’m wondering what John McCain has to say to his old friend, assuming, of course, they are in the same place.
The news of Graham’s death comes as a shock, because at 71 he was a spring chicken compared to the elders of the senate. But this reminder of the fragility of life is yet another cautionary tale, especially when so much rides on the few, the ancient, and the mercurial. Things can change in the blink of eye; and we are not just talking about Graham’s pliable and fluctuating principles.
But Graham’s elasticity is an unavoidable part of his legacy, along with his extraordinary capacity for self-abasement and humiliation.
This may sound harsh, but the long and winding road of Graham’s career is a moment to reflect on how we got here; and how men and women in power will be remembered for their choices.
Graham could have been something else. He was bright, funny, and back in 2015 and 2016, he was prophetic. Donald Trump, he said back then, was “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for”
Back then, Graham explained:
He's putting our soldiers and diplomats at risk, he's empowering the enemy and this ban, if it's actually enacted, would take people who have been interpreters, who came to our side in Iraq and Afghanistan and who are under siege in their own countries, it basically becomes a death sentence for them."…
“[Trump’s] never served. Going to a military high school, Donald, is really not military Service.” “You’ve never worn the uniform, you’ve never been on a forward operating base, you’ve never been at a PRT as a member of the Department of Justice or the Department of State, you’ve never been a USAID worker going into some poor devastated area in Iraq and Afghanistan trying to help our country by helping others. So knock it off, you’re putting people at risk.”…
“You’re undercutting their efforts, you’re slandering their sacrifice, you’re marginalizing what they’re trying to make the world a better place.”
And, of course, this:
**
But we know the rest of the story, as Graham morphed from statesman to Trump fluffer in-chief. (See: “What Happened to Lindsey Graham?”)
Back in 2020, Graham was one of the main subjects of Anne Applebaum’s cover story in The Atlantic on the collaborations of the GOP. “Why Do Republican Leaders Continue to Enable Trump?”
A friend who regularly runs into Lindsey Graham in Washington told me that each time they meet, “he brags about having just met with Trump” while exhibiting “high school” levels of excitement, as if “a popular quarterback has just bestowed some attention on a nerdy debate-club leader—the powerful big kid likes me! ” That kind of intense pleasure is hard to relinquish and even harder to live without.
But Graham’s support was also substantive.
It was Graham who made excuses for Trump’s abuse of power. It was Graham—a JAG Corps lawyer—who downplayed the evidence that the president had attempted to manipulate foreign courts and blackmail a foreign leader into launching a phony investigation into a political rival. It was Graham who abandoned his own stated support for bipartisanship and instead pushed for a hyperpartisan Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. It was Graham who played golf with Trump, who made excuses for him on television, who supported the president even as he slowly destroyed the American alliances—with Europeans, with the Kurds—that Graham had defended all his life.
Like so many of Trump’s other enablers, Graham told himself that his cringey sycophancy was worth it because it enabled him to remain “relevant.”
This is what I wrote back in 2019:
“Graham told himself: by staying close to Trump, he could influence him and prevent horribly bad decisions. Others made the same calculation, but Graham made the uber-tradeoff, because the stakes were so high. What did it matter if he had to endure temporary embarrassments, abase himself on cable television, or even become a political punchline, if he could stop Trump from impulsive decisions regarding Russia or North Korea? Or Syria?”
“The world saw Graham as a craven, cringing Uriah Heep. Graham saw himself as someone who could save the world…
“Graham calculated: If he didn’t play golf with Trump and indulge his penchant for pillow talk, Trump would be putting and chatting with Rand Paul, listening to the counsels of isolationism, appeasement and international amorality. He was not simply the adult in the room; he was the adult BFF in the room, who would temper Trump’s worst instincts.”
Lindsey Graham continued to fawn for relevance long after it became obvious that Trump’s worst instincts were not, in fact, tempered. And so, Graham was doomed to watch as our allies were alienated and abandoned, and his vision of America squandered. Even so, he kept coming back for more, again and again.
Graham’s life was not a tragedy. It was a choice. And for what? The approval of Donald Trump? The praise of a man whose measure he had taken a decade ago?
Exit take: What profits it a man to gain the world if he loses his soul? But for Donald J. Trump, Lindsey?
Meanwhile, the Iran ceasefire goes up in flames as the President of Peace once again threatens war crimes on a massive scale.
A week of commentary
Congratulations on making it through another week. ICYMI:
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday dogs
Flying dog.
Everything you say is so true Charlie. In the end, he sold his soul out.
He was supposed to be on “Meet the Press” this morning to talk about his trip last Friday to the Ukraine and his meeting with President Zelenskyy. After the meeting with him, Lindsay declared that when he got back to Washington, he was going to push through legislation for sanctions to be imposed on Russia.
Unfortunately, last night he all of a sudden had some cardiac event that led to his death.
It is too bad. He did not have a personal reckoning while he was alive about what he’s been participating in the last 10 years with Trump.
His words when Trump became a candidate were the truth. And he should’ve lived by that truth and fought for good of mankind and for our democracy and our constitution, the way, his good friend John McCain did.
I love the lake picture.
Well done. Truth without being tawdry. It is a shame what he and others have done and are doing to themselves and our great country.
Sometimes I sit on my back patio with a beverage, looking at the woods, and I am truly gobsmacked & horrified at where we are. Mrs. Graham's boy is one of the reasons we are here.