Lindsey Graham, longtime GOP senator and Trump ally, dies at 71 after sudden illness

By Alison Main, Karina Tsui, Lauren Fox, Kara Fox, CNN

(CNN) — US Sen. Lindsey Graham, a longtime Republican from South Carolina and ally of President Donald Trump, has died “from a brief and sudden illness,” a spokesperson for his office told CNN. He was 71.

First elected to the US Senate in 2002, Graham came to embody the evolution of the Republican Party as a critic to Trump who turned fiercely loyal, eventually growing to be one of the president’s closest advisers on Capitol Hill.

But even as his fealty to Trump was unquestioned, the senior senator continued to be a vocal spokesperson for US intervention and leadership across the globe — often breaking with the more isolationist bent of Trump’s supporters.

Graham made a name for himself as a foreign policy hawk who ardently advocated for military intervention in Iran and Iraq and was a leading voice for the unwavering US support for Israel and Ukraine. His political career was intrinsically connected to his close relationship to two giants in the Republican Party: first with the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona and then with Trump.

Graham died on Saturday, according to his X account, shortly after returning from a visit to Ukraine — one of many he made after the Russia’s 2022 invasion. Emergency responders were dispatched to a DC address for Graham around 8:30 p.m. ET for a report of someone suffering from chest pains, according to audio of the dispatch on Broadcastify. The audio indicates someone called in from Baltimore and was heading to the home.

A spokesperson for Graham did not disclose further details about the senator’s illness.

“Senator Graham’s family appreciates prayers at this time and asks for privacy during this incredibly difficult period,” the spokesperson said.

Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he had spoken with Graham just hours earlier, when the senator had returned from Ukraine. The president said they discussed his voter ID legislation — the “SAVE America Act” — and Graham’s recent travels.

“He said, ‘I’m tired because it’s a long trip,’ but other than that, he was he was fine,” Trump recalled.

“What a terrible loss it is,” the president added. “He’s a great politician. He was a natural. Very few of them. He was a natural politician. Got along with everybody.”

Graham began his political career in the early ’90s after serving as a city and county attorney in South Carolina. He was elected to the House in 1994. He also served in the US Air Force as a prosecutor and defense attorney.

His early life was marked by the deaths of his mother and father within 15 months of each other when he was an undergraduate; his father died of a heart attack, his mother from cancer. Graham helped raise his then 13-year-old sister, Darline, and later adopted her.

He never married nor had children.

A Trump critic turned ally

Graham briefly ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2015, arguing the GOP needed to tell Trump, his then-rival, to “go to hell” after Trump proposed a ban on Muslims coming to the US. During the 2016 GOP primary, Graham was one of Trump’s fiercest Republican objectors, calling him the “most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican Party” and warning that nominating Trump would doom the party. Graham refused to vote for him in the general election.

“It was a nasty campaign,” Trump told CNN on Sunday. “He was tough and nasty, but I was nasty, too, and it worked out fine.”

The dynamic between the two men changed after a March 2017 meeting between the congressman and the newly inaugurated president, though Graham still broke with Trump at times. Hours after rioters stormed the Capitol to try to block the certification of the 2020 election, Graham acknowledged that Joe Biden, his former Senate colleague, was lawfully elected to be president, despite Trump’s baseless claims that he had won.

“Trump and I, we had a hell of a journey. I hate it being this way. I hate it being this way. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough,” Graham said on the Senate floor on January 6, his voice filled with emotion, after the rioters were cleared from the Capitol.

But the pair repaired their relationship in the coming months, and by Trump’s second term, Graham became one of his most trusted voices in the Senate, at one point calling himself the president’s “North Star.”

At the same time, Graham also remained close with McCain, his best friend in the Senate who clashed personally and politically with the president. McCain died in 2018.

“There are few memories I have of my Dad’s political career and my life accompanying it that don’t somehow involve Lindsey,” Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late senator, wrote in a tribute to Graham on Sunday.

She highlighted Graham and her father’s relationship with Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman. The three men worked across party lines on immigration and other politically tough issues, forging a close bond that defied the partisanship of Washington.

Graham worked with McCain on a massive, bipartisan immigration reform package that passed the Senate in 2013 and bolstered border security while creating a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants who had entered the country illegally. He was also a sponsor of the DREAM Act, which provided Americans who arrived in the country illegally as children an opportunity to gain lawful permanent residence if they met certain work or educational requirements.

Graham had served as the chairman of the highly influential Senate Judiciary Committee and the Budget Committee.

He played a critical role in advancing Trump’s second-term agenda through budget frameworks, including a package of tax cuts and changes to social programs, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that Democrats decried.

“There was no better advocate,” Trump told CNN on Sunday. “He was a fantastic advocate in the Senate. … If I had a really big problem with a certain Democrat, he could work it out.”

In his role as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Graham emerged as one of the staunchest defenders and advocates for Brett Kavanaugh, even after an allegation of sexual assault threatened Kavanaugh’s confirmation as a Supreme Court justice.

“This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics,” Graham said in an impassioned speech directed at his Democratic colleagues during Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Graham had crossed the aisle and voted with Democrats for both Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor during the Obama administration, earning the ire of the right flank of his party.

Tributes from lawmakers and international allies who worked closely with the Republican senator began pouring in the hours following the announcement of his death.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune praised Graham’s decades of military and public service and his belief in “the might of America to achieve good in the world.”

“His influence on the federal judiciary, our national defense, and his beloved South Carolina will be felt for generations,” Thune said in a statement.

Vice President JD Vance said, “We certainly had our disagreements. But I couldn’t help but like him. A one of a kind figure in our politics.”

Biden said that he and Graham “disagreed often, and sometimes loudly,” but added in a post on X, “Lindsey and I did agree on the profound importance of public service. Like me, he loved the Senate as an institution, even with all its flaws and complexities.”

First elected to the US Senate in 2002, Graham was running for a fifth term in this fall’s midterm elections, and his death will have implications for legislative business in the Senate — where Republicans slim margin is already under stress with the absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell.

Under state law, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster can appoint a temporary replacement to fill Graham’s now-vacant seat. Because Graham was up for reelection this year, there is also now a vacancy in the Republican nomination for the seat. State law appears to call for a special primary election to be held on August 11, with a possible runoff on August 25, to choose his replacement, but officials have not yet announced a process.

Legacy of support for Israel and Ukraine

Graham built his reputation as a foreign policy interventionist, with Israel, Iran, Iraq and Ukraine at the center of it.

Graham was one of Israel’s staunchest defenders in Congress, championing billions in security aid and making multiple trips to the region after Hamas’ attacks on October 7, 2020.

Israeli leaders were among the first foreign officials to praise Graham’s legacy, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that Israel had lost “one of its greatest friends.”

“Lindsey understood that the security of Israel and America are inseparable,” he said.

On Iran, Graham was consistently the Senate’s most aggressive voice, opposing the 2015 nuclear deal and calling for preemptive strikes as early as 2010. At the start of the current war with Iran, he backed the US-Israel bombing campaign while comparing the regime to Nazi Germany.

Graham was one of the Senate’s most persistent advocates for continued US military aid to Ukraine, making repeated trips to Kyiv throughout the war, with his 10th shortly before his death.

The senator was a staunch supporter of arming Ukraine and applying sanctions against Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said he met with Graham twice over the past week, said he was “deeply saddened” by the news.

“Lindsey was a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer,” he said, adding that Ukraine will “always be especially grateful for the recognition of our people and words of admiration for the courage of Ukraine’s defenders.”

Graham backed the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and became one of the war’s most vocal defenders in the Senate, pushing hard for the 2007 troop surge, and even serving brief reserve stints in Iraq to make his case firsthand. He later warned that withdrawing troops too soon would let Iraq “go to hell.”

Graham applied that conviction to Afghanistan — where he also deployed as a sitting member of Congress – opposing a full troop withdrawal from the US’ 20-year war, warning that the Biden administration was “paving the way for another 9/11.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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CNN’s Jedd Rosche, Matthew Rehbein, Lauren Fox, Tim Lister, Ted Barrett and Diego Mendoza contributed to this report.