Sen. Lindsey Graham was eulogized Tuesday as “a true American original” during memorial services in Washington, where his flag-draped casket moved from the U.S. Capitol to Washington National Cathedral and drew President Donald Trump, foreign leaders, Cabinet officials, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and current and former senators into the same ritual of power.
The pageantry said plenty. Ordinary people got a funeral spectacle built around the machinery of the state, while the people who run that machinery took turns praising one of their own. Graham died suddenly on July 11 at his home in Washington of a likely aortic tear, according to preliminary findings. He was 71.
Who Gets the Honors
Trump called Graham “a giant of the United States Senate, a true American original who left us much too soon.” In mostly prepared remarks, Trump described his onetime presidential rival turned ally as “the first person to make you laugh and one of the last people that you've really ever wanted to fight.” Trump also told the story of how he had publicly disclosed Graham's cellphone number on the campaign trail, reciting the number in the cathedral, then said Graham had the last laugh because “Lindsey did not stop calling me for the next 10 years.”
Among those gathered were Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy, leaders of two countries fighting separate wars, a nod to Graham's role as a foremost believer in the power of the U.S. and its military to intervene in the world's problems. Fox News' Sean Hannity said Graham would have been moved that they both made the long journeys to attend.
Trump Cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and current and former senators and lawmakers joined in the pews, as did Graham's sister, now-Sen. Darline Graham, who was appointed by the state's governor to fill the remainder of her brother's term. That detail says everything about how the system reproduces itself: a governor fills the seat, the Senate mourns the senator, and the family name stays inside the institution.
The People in the Pews
During the morning service in the Capitol Rotunda, Vice President JD Vance described Graham as a man of “swashbuckling” stature — “who swashbuckled into the Senate” with his suit jacket open — and was impossible not to like. “Lindsey was a towering figure,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, choking back tears during his remarks.
One by one, many of Graham's colleagues said their goodbyes in the Rotunda. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., placed both hands on his casket and then placed her hand on her heart. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., saluted from her wheelchair. Former Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., bowed and delivered a brief kiss and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., gave a fist bump. The choreography was intimate, polished and unmistakably political. The state knows how to mourn its own.
First elected to Congress in the 1994 Republican revolt that swept the GOP to power, Graham was part of a new era of conservatives to take their seats in the House — and among the first Republicans from his Southern state since Reconstruction. He quickly rose to prominence as a manager in Democrat Bill Clinton's presidential impeachment, and he was elected to the Senate in the 2002 election. There, he formed an alliance with Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, in what would become the “three amigos,” globe-trotting the world focused on national security issues.
For decades, Graham had been at the center of the action — a member of virtually every bipartisan gang in Congress — with a relentless ability to adapt to political realities, particularly when it came to Trump. That’s the language of the apparatus: adaptation, access, influence, and the smooth management of empire.
What They Called Legacy
Vance recalled how he argued with Graham over the senator's staunch support for aid to Ukraine, which has divided the GOP, but praised his legacy saying Kavanaugh “would not be on the Supreme Court” were it not for Graham's “fierce advocacy” during the confirmation hearing. The line lands like a reminder that the courts, too, are built through political patronage and elite maneuvering.
The “Trump whisperer” had one last mission: Russia sanctions. Graham had denounced Trump as “unfit for office” during the 2016 presidential campaign, but over time he had become what colleagues called the “Trump whisperer,” someone even world leaders relied on to understand the president. Days before his death, Graham had won Trump's support for a long-fought bipartisan proposal to impose sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine, in what would be one of the strongest U.S. efforts to hamper Russian President Vladimir Putin's ability to prolong the conflict.
Senators were scheduled to take a first procedural vote Tuesday evening on the sanctions package, in Graham's honor. Zelenskyy was expected to be on hand and meeting with senators in the evening. The ritual of grief rolled straight into the ritual of governance, with the same people deciding war, sanctions and the terms of public life.
At the Washington cathedral, a roster of socially conservative and anti-abortion leaders gave readings, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Marjorie Jones Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and the Reverend William Franklin Graham III. The cathedral service made room for the usual institutional gatekeepers, each one lending moral cover to a political order that keeps power concentrated at the top.
When Hannity said how important Darline Graham and her family had been to the senator, she put her hand over her heart in response. Lindsey Graham never married, but the Air Force veteran helped support his younger sister after both of his parents died while he was at college and then starting law school. He became the guardian for Darline, who was then 13, and he later in life often extolled the benefits of Social Security that helped keep them financially afloat.
Darline Graham is now running in a potentially crowded primary field for the fall election. The filing period for the special primary election closes Tuesday, with voting set for Aug. 11. Even in death, the machinery keeps moving: appointments, primaries, votes, and the same narrow channels for power that ordinary people are told to call democracy.