Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has suffered a series of indignities to get in Donald Trump’s good graces. In fact, his transformation from unapologetic critic to sharp-elbowed booster of the former president is one of the most dramatic in American politics.
Yet a Monday spat between the two, in which Trump laid into the senator for “respectfully” disagreeing with his decision to oppose a federal abortion ban, put into sharp relief a truism in the age of Trump: Loyalty is a one-way street.
Graham, who once called Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot,” reinvented himself into a close ally after he became president. He was among the first high-profile Republicans to endorse his 2024 campaign and has used the criminal indictments against Trump to make impassioned fundraising pleas on cable TV.
The allegiance has given Graham a unique opportunity to shape the former president’s thinking. He is one of a handful of congressional allies who speak with him on a regular basis and has been known to golf at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Yet the former president has at times ignored his counsel. He’s even torn into the senator when he takes disagreements public.
Graham had been urging Trump to come out in support of a 15-week federal ban on abortion, arguing it would merely put the United States on par with the restrictions of other European countries.
“It’s a state’s issue up to a point. But the pro-life movement, I told the president, is not about geography, it’s about the child,” he said on Monday, telling reporters he spoke with the former president “a week or so ago.”
Trump had been waffling on abortion. He simultaneously owned the outcome in Roe v. Wade, due to his appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, but judged that a federal ban could cost Republicans in November.
Once he made up his mind, he slammed Graham for not letting the issue rest. He called the senator a warmonger who should “spend less time on taking away our Great Roe v. Wade Victory of sending a complicated and controversial Issue back to the States” and more time addressing the crisis at the southern border.
Trump’s diatribe — he mentioned Graham by name seven times across three hours of Truth Social posts on Monday — marked a rare rebuke of one of his closest allies. But it also underscored the limits of Graham’s influence with the former president and how his political transformation has gone, to greater and lesser extents, unrewarded and even scorned.
Graham has forged one of the most enduring, if unconventional, alliances with Trump since he arrived on the political scene in 2015.
He’s papered over the insults the two lobbed at each other as they ran for president that year, including disparaging remarks Trump made about his good friend, the late Sen. John McCain.
Graham, who famously set his phone on fire after Trump read his number aloud to supporters, is hardly alone. The Trump era is replete with allies who decided to look past Trump’s fondness for bullying. But the lengths Graham has gone to align himself with the former president has surprised even close followers of Graham’s decadeslong career in Congress.
In February, Graham, one of the biggest defense hawks in the Senate, voted against funding for the war in Ukraine after Trump came out against a border deal meant to ease its passage. Graham then voted against the package with the border provisions removed, urging Congress to turn the aid into a loan after Trump floated the idea at a campaign rally.
Graham’s allegiance has earned him an open line with the former president and, consequentially, an endorsement in his 2020 reelection bid. But he has failed to moderate some of Trump’s impulses and has, at other times, fallen in line when he could not convince him on policy.
Graham spent months shaping the border deal he eventually opposed, negotiating provisions on parole that were not enough to satisfy Trump or the Republican-led House.
“I don’t know if an open line always means he’s influential there,” said one Republican strategist close to the Trump campaign who emphasized that Graham does still have sway.
Despite his reputation as a fierce defender of the former president, Graham, at one time known as a collegial centrist, has publicly broken with Trump in the past and rebuffed the idea that he dictates his votes after the border deal fell apart.
He’s urged him to move on from his claims of a stolen election — “Do you want January the 6th to be your political obituary?” he recalled telling Trump after the riot — and has disagreed with Trump’s intention to pardon those who vandalized the Capitol that day.
Trump has not taken kindly to those reproaches. He called him a “RINO,” or Republican in name only, for his comments on pardons, and has publicly yo-yoed between insults and praise for Graham, sometimes in the breath.
“Lindsey Graham, the progressive from South Carolina,” Trump said to boos at a fundraiser he held in Florida last year. “No, he’s a progressive, but he’s got some good things, too, OK?”
During Trump’s presidency, the White House accused him of being “completely dishonest” in their negotiations over an earlier attempt at immigration reform.
Such taunts have come to define his fallouts with past allies. To this day, he calls Mike Pence, a loyal foot soldier for him as vice president, a “traitor” for certifying the 2020 election.
And even Republicans more naturally aligned with him, such as his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was pushed out of his post over his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
Jan. 6 tested Graham’s own commitment to Trump. In the hours after rioters ransacked the Capitol, he declared “enough’s enough” in an exasperated floor speech in which he said he was finished with the 2020 election challenges.
But he decided to keep the relationship intact, even when Trump’s hold over the party seemed freshly in doubt.
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Graham’s public break on abortion marks the latest flare-up in his bumpy relationship with Trump. Yet the strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the situation candidly, doubted the fresh rift had deeper implications for Graham’s loyalty.
“He always gets over it,” the operative said.