From Trump critic to trusted adviser: Lindsey Graham's foreign policy legacy

In 2015, Senator Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump a “jackass” and warned Republicans that nominating him would be a disaster. Trump responded by reading Graham's cell phone number aloud during a campaign rally, encouraging supporters to call the South Carolina senator.

Few political contests have seemed more unlikely to evolve into Washington's most important foreign policy alliance.

Trump rose to power promising to end America's “endless wars” and decades of challenging Republican foreign policy. Graham, by contrast, remained throughout his three decades in public service an unabashed advocate of projecting American power abroad.

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Yet over the next decade, Graham became one of the few lawmakers with regular access to President Trump on national security questions, emerging as one of the Republican Party's most influential voices on Iran, Ukraine, Israel and NATO.

He built his Senate career on foreign policy. While most lawmakers spent weekends back home, Graham often met with presidents overseas, visiting war zones and trying to broker trade deals between allies and the White House.

By the end of his career, his office had become an unofficial conduit for foreign leaders trying to understand — or influence — the Trump administration.

In interviews following the senator's sudden death Saturday, Trump described Graham as a “family member” and said he was among the last people to speak to the South Carolina Republican after he returned from Ukraine hours before his death.

As Trump realigns Republican foreign policy around an “America First” agenda, Graham has become one of the few congressional voices able to regularly reach the president on questions of war and peace. He has consistently pressed Trump to maintain a strong US role abroad – even as the president questions long-standing alliances and warns against long-term military intervention.

Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham pose for a photo on the golf course on June 28, 2025. (Sen. Lindsey Graham via X)

Rather than being another Republican hawk sidelined by Trump's rise, Graham cultivated a close working relationship with the president, giving him unusual influence as the administration navigated conflicts from Ukraine and Iran to Israel and NATO.

Whether Graham simply reinforced Trump's sentiments — or helped shape them — may be one of the defining questions of his foreign policy legacy.

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“He was calling me all the time,” Trump told Fox News on Monday. “I'd say, 'Stop calling me, Lindsey.' It was amazing. He didn't stop. He was a worker – a fully committed politician. “

Colleagues say Graham lived and breathed the work of the Senate, mostly serving as an informal ambassador between the US and allies around the world.

In the hours before his death, Graham told a confidant that he was not feeling well but joked that he would not die now because he had work to do. He was preparing to push a long-stalled bipartisan Russia sanctions bill through the Senate, remained focused on improving the Saudi-Israeli situation and believed the Trump administration was not done dealing with Iran.

He had just completed his 10th trip to Ukraine, and maintained strong relations not only with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy but also with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Gulf leaders and others around the world.

Graham believes the influence came from visibility, according to Jack Keane, a retired four-star general, chairman of the Center for the Study of War and Fox News Chief Strategy Analyst.

“He wasn't interested in writing op-ed pieces or making speeches, he wanted to make personal contact with world leaders.” Keane, who counts Graham as a friend, told Fox News Digital. “He was interested in getting results.”

Graham, when he was beaten by Trump in the 2016 primary, admitted that the housing chief at the time had a better understanding of the American public than he did.

“He understood the American people better than we did, and he was ashamed of us for not doing it as successfully as he did,” Graham said at the time, according to Keane.

So Graham began working as an assistant to the president.

“Graham knew the world better than anyone in Washington, and he probably knew many foreign leaders better than President Trump's nominees,” Keane said. “He made a conscious decision to help the president by providing advice and counsel, which grew into a personal and professional relationship.”

Graham's worldview has been shaped alongside Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., with whom he travels extensively overseas. The trio – known as the “Three Amigos” – championed a Republican foreign policy of intervention based on American military leadership, support for pro-democracies and confrontation with authoritarian enemies.

Graham has publicly disagreed with Trump over the Iran talks — preferring strikes and regime change — and has repeatedly emphasized a hard line against Russia in the war in Ukraine.

Those charges have sometimes drawn him closer to traditional Republican foreign policy than Trump's “America First” mentality, as he works to remain one of the president's closest advisers.

Trump's approach to foreign policy often veered between military confrontation and bureaucratic restraint. Graham rarely does.

Sen. Lindsey Graham was photographed in Kyiv on June 10, one day before his death. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)

Whenever Trump appeared to be moving closer to a negotiated deal with Iran, Graham followed a familiar playbook: remind the White House that Congress would eventually have to review any lasting deal.

After Trump announced a memorandum of understanding with Iran in June, Graham quickly argued that any lasting deal would require congressional review and suggested Vice President JD Vance would eventually have to defend it on Capitol Hill.

By the time of his death, Graham had carved out the role he wanted in Washington: a trusted spokesman between the White House, Congress and foreign leaders.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., described Graham as “having a childlike joy about his job and the responsibilities he was given.”

“Even in his sixties he used to get off a plane in another country and blink and look at me like he's saying, can you believe we're really here and doing this?” wrote to X.

It's rare in life to be exactly where you want to be, where you want to be, who you want to be with, do exactly what you want to do – it was all the time for Lindsey,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wrote in X.

“Lindsey was a member of parliament. Work was everything to him. He truly believed in the beauty of the office and the noble lineage behind it, and he was a worthy heir.”

Graham was rarely interested in winning an argument if it meant losing the presidency. He has spent more than a year revising his long-standing Russia sanctions policy and negotiating with the White House as Trump pursues his own relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A few days before his death, Graham announced that he had reached an agreement with the administration to move the bill forward.

While Trump often questioned the importance of NATO and wanted allies to shoulder more of the burden, Graham viewed America's alliances as one of its greatest strategic advantages. He generally acknowledged that European countries need to spend more on defense, but said the alliance itself remains important in deterring Russia and projecting American power.

Graham's support for Israel was part of his worldview. He considered Israel to be America's closest ally in the Middle East and spent years working to strengthen relations between Israel and the Arab states, viewing the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement as a historic opportunity to reshape the region while continuing to isolate Iran.

Graham spent a decade proving that in Washington, proximity to power can be as important as legal authority. Without Graham in Washington, Ukraine now fears that it may lose an important advocate in Washington.

“It's a big and unexpected loss,” Oleksandr Merezhko, a lawyer for Zelenskyy's party, told AP. “He was really important. I don't even know who could be as important as us now in the Trump team.”

“He was the closest person between Ukraine, our president and Trump,” he added. “Our position on the Trump team may be weakened.”

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It's not clear who will be able to get Graham's Russia sanctions bill through the Senate and the president's desk with equal access to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

In the meantime, the president will navigate the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East without a friend who has never been shy about telling him to hit hard.