Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, dies after a brief and unexpected illness, his office says

Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, one of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s clos­est al­lies in Con­gress who trav­eled the globe to ad­vo­cate for a more ag­gres­sive U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, has died af­ter a “brief and sud­den ill­ness,” his of­fice said. He was 71.

The state­ment post­ed on so­cial me­dia late Sat­ur­day did not pro­vide any ad­di­tion­al de­tails about the South Car­oli­na Re­pub­li­can, a for­mer Air Force lawyer, and said his fam­i­ly “ap­pre­ci­ates prayers at this time and asks for pri­va­cy dur­ing this in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.”

“Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham, one of the great­est peo­ple and Sen­a­tors I have ever known, is dead!” Trump post­ed on so­cial me­dia ear­ly Sun­day. “He was al­ways work­ing, and was a true Amer­i­can Pa­tri­ot. Lind­sey will be great­ly missed!!! DE­TAILS AND ARRANGE­MENTS TO FOL­LOW. So sad!”

Sen­ate Ma­jor­i­ty Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said “my heart is heavy this morn­ing to learn the pass­ing of my friend and col­league.”

Thune said Gra­ham was “a strong ad­vo­cate for the Unit­ed States and a strong al­ly to free­dom-lov­ing coun­tries across the globe. He be­lieved in the might of Amer­i­ca to achieve good in the world and ded­i­cat­ed his life to ad­vanc­ing that cause.”

Gra­ham was one of the most in­flu­en­tial fig­ures in Wash­ing­ton on for­eign pol­i­cy, and he ad­vised Trump on mat­ters such as Iran and Rus­sia. The sen­a­tor had just re­turned from Ukraine and an­nounced an agree­ment on Fri­day with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to move for­ward on a pack­age of Rus­sia sanc­tions. He had been sched­uled to ap­pear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sun­day morn­ing.

As chair­man of the Sen­ate Bud­get Com­mit­tee, Gra­ham had a cen­tral role dur­ing Trump’s sec­ond term as Re­pub­li­cans pushed ma­jor leg­is­la­tion on par­ty-line votes while hold­ing a nar­row 53-47 ma­jor­i­ty in the cham­ber.

Un­der South Car­oli­na law, Re­pub­li­can Gov. Hen­ry Mc­Mas­ter will ap­point a tem­po­rary re­place­ment for Gra­ham, who was seek­ing a fifth term in No­vem­ber.

Gra­ham was close with Trump

Gra­ham, who was elect­ed to the Sen­ate in 2002 af­ter serv­ing in the House, long pro­mot­ed a pol­i­cy of ro­bust U.S. mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tion­ism and strong na­tion­al de­fense that in lat­er years would put him at odds with the grow­ing iso­la­tion­ist wing of the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty.

More re­cent­ly, Gra­ham had be­come well-known for his close ties with Trump, whom the sen­a­tor briefly ran against for the par­ty’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion in 2016.

Their re­la­tion­ship would be­gin on a rough note, with Gra­ham call­ing the then-New York busi­ness­man “un­fit for of­fice.” Gra­ham al­so used a pro­fan­i­ty to de­scribe Trump af­ter Trump made dis­parag­ing com­ments about Ari­zona Re­pub­li­can John Mc­Cain, Gra­ham’s best friend in the Sen­ate and a Viet­nam War vet­er­an. Mc­Cain and Gra­ham, along with Sen. Joe Lieber­man, I-Conn., were known as the “Three Ami­gos” and fre­quent­ly trav­eled to­geth­er to push their hawk­ish for­eign pol­i­cy views around the globe.

Dur­ing a cam­paign ral­ly in South Car­oli­na, Trump read out Gra­ham’s per­son­al cell­phone num­ber and con­tin­ued to be­lit­tle him through­out the 2016 cam­paign as Gra­ham made it clear he would not sup­port Trump, even though he was the nom­i­nee.

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But Gra­ham shift­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly once Trump won the White House. He emerged as one of Trump’s top al­lies — speak­ing with him fre­quent­ly and be­com­ing a reg­u­lar pres­ence on the golf course along­side the pres­i­dent — even as Mc­Cain re­mained a crit­ic.

In a 2018 in­ter­view with The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, Gra­ham ex­plained his piv­ot by say­ing Mc­Cain taught him that the coun­try must move for­ward af­ter elec­tions and that meant “you have an oblig­a­tion” to help the pres­i­dent. Mc­Cain ran twice for the White House.

“And I’ve tried to be help­ful where I could be­cause I think he needs all the help he can get,” Gra­ham said of Trump. “You can be a bet­ter crit­ic when peo­ple un­der­stand that you’re try­ing to help them be suc­cess­ful.”

Gra­ham ap­peared to break with Trump af­ter the Jan. 6, 2021, at­tack on the Capi­tol, say­ing, “Count me out. Enough is enough.” But the sen­a­tor re­turned to the fold and re­mained close with the pres­i­dent dur­ing his sec­ond term.

For­eign pol­i­cy was a fo­cus for Gra­ham

Gra­ham had been in Ukraine to meet with Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy, who said that the sen­a­tor vis­it­ed his coun­try 10 times dur­ing the years since Rus­sia’s full-scale in­va­sion.

“Lind­sey was a true de­fend­er of free­dom and the val­ues that make our world safer,” Ze­len­skyy said.

Gra­ham’s trav­els made him a fa­mil­iar face to dozens of world lead­ers.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu mourned Gra­ham’s death, call­ing him “a great friend of Is­rael” and “a cher­ished friend of mine.”

Ne­tanyahu said Gra­ham un­der­stood that the se­cu­ri­ty of Is­rael and the Unit­ed States was in­sep­a­ra­ble and de­vot­ed his life to de­fend­ing Amer­i­ca, strength­en­ing the U.S.-Is­rael al­liance and stand­ing up for the free world.

“Is­rael has lost one of its great­est friends. Amer­i­ca has lost a great pa­tri­ot. I have lost a beloved friend,” Ne­tanyahu said.

Gra­ham was chair­man of Sen­ate Bud­get, Ju­di­cia­ry com­mit­tees

As chair­man of the Bud­get pan­el, Gra­ham’s com­mit­tee over­saw a process called rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, a Sen­ate pro­ce­dure that al­lowed Re­pub­li­cans to pass sig­nif­i­cant poli­cies such as last year’s tax law with­out the threat of a De­mo­c­ra­t­ic fil­i­buster.

He had pre­vi­ous­ly led the Sen­ate Ju­di­cia­ry Com­mit­tee when Re­pub­li­cans con­firmed Amy Coney Bar­rett to the Supreme Court in 2020, and was in line to re­gain that gav­el if the par­ty kept con­trol of the Sen­ate af­ter the midterms elec­tions.

“In 2027, I’ll be Chair­man of the Sen­ate Ju­di­cia­ry Com­mit­tee once again,” Gra­ham post­ed on X on June 30. “And I’ll wake up every sin­gle day with one goal: con­firm­ing as many con­ser­v­a­tive judges as pos­si­ble.”

Gra­ham was a key play­er in the Sen­ate’s ef­forts to craft a mas­sive im­mi­gra­tion over­haul in 2013 as a mem­ber of a bi­par­ti­san group that wrote a sweep­ing mea­sure that would have al­tered vir­tu­al­ly every part of U.S. im­mi­gra­tion law. It passed the Sen­ate with 68 votes but was nev­er tak­en up by the House, so it did not be­come law.

But Gra­ham’s views on im­mi­gra­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly an en­dorse­ment of a path to cit­i­zen­ship for peo­ple in the U.S. with­out le­gal sta­tus, put him at odds with some Re­pub­li­can fac­tions.

He some­times faced pri­ma­ry chal­lenges in his home state of South Car­oli­na, but he won the nom­i­na­tion out­right in June.

The sen­a­tor ad­dressed the pres­i­dent in his vic­to­ry speech last month, say­ing, “I’m go­ing to help you change this world and change this coun­try.”

Spe­cial elec­tion to re­place Gra­ham could be with­in weeks

Gra­ham won 57% of the GOP vote in the pri­ma­ry and was up against De­mo­c­rat An­nie An­drews, a pe­di­a­tri­cian, and sev­er­al mi­nor par­ty and in­de­pen­dent can­di­dates in No­vem­ber.

Af­ter Mc­Mas­ter ap­points a re­place­ment, South Car­oli­na law re­quires a spe­cial pri­ma­ry for vot­ers to se­lect a new nom­i­nee with­in weeks of a va­can­cy. The gen­er­al elec­tion win­ner will take of­fice Jan­u­ary, be­gin­ning a full six-year term.

Mc­Mas­ter’s of­fice did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­turn mes­sages seek­ing com­ment on who would take Gra­ham’s seat or when the machi­na­tions for the pri­ma­ry would be­gin. State par­ty of­fi­cials said ear­ly Sun­day they would re­lease more in­for­ma­tion when they could.

The sparse state­ment by Gra­ham’s of­fice, which did not ex­plain his death, comes dur­ing a stretch of con­cern about a lack of trans­paren­cy about law­mak­ers’ health.

Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., was ab­sent with­out ex­pla­na­tion for months be­fore re­turn­ing to Con­gress and dis­clos­ing that he had been di­ag­nosed with de­pres­sion.

Ken­tucky Sen. Mitch Mc­Connell, the for­mer long­time Re­pub­li­can leader, was hos­pi­tal­ized weeks ago for undis­closed health rea­sons.

Mc­Mas­ter said in a state­ment that Gra­ham was “ir­re­place­able.”

“The fiercest of fight­ers for South Car­oli­na and Amer­i­ca — and a loy­al and stead­fast friend,” Mc­Mas­ter said. He added: “We shall not see his likes again.”

Gra­ham was not mar­ried and did not have chil­dren. His clos­est liv­ing rel­a­tive is sis­ter Dar­line Gra­ham Nor­done, whom he helped raise af­ter both their par­ents died.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Mary Clare Jalonick and Christo­pher Megerian in Wash­ing­ton, Meg Kin­nard in Co­lum­bia, S.C., Bri­an P. D. Han­non in Bangkok and Geir Moul­son in Berlin con­tributed to this re­port.

By SE­UNG MIN KIM

WASH­ING­TON (AP)