This article was originally published on Crafting Your Home. A human contributor also wrote and edited the post.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the longtime South Carolina Republican who spent more than two decades in the U.S. Senate, has died at age 71.
His office confirmed that Graham passed away on the evening of July 11 following what was described only as a brief and sudden illness, with no additional details released about the cause of death.
The announcement came in the early hours of Sunday morning, just as Graham had been scheduled to appear on NBC’s Meet the Press following a recent trip to Ukraine.
Graham’s office asked for privacy for his family during what it called an incredibly difficult period, a request that has been widely respected as tributes began pouring in from across the political spectrum within hours of the news breaking.
His death leaves South Carolina’s senior Senate seat vacant less than four months before Graham had been expected to seek a fifth term in office, and it lands at an already difficult moment for Senate Republicans, whose narrow majority has also been affected by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s ongoing hospitalization.
Trump Says Their Final Phone Call Came Hours Before Graham’s Death
President Donald Trump, one of Graham’s closest allies in Washington, revealed that the two men had spoken by phone on Saturday evening, only hours before Graham died.
Trump said Graham had just returned from a trip to Ukraine and told him he was feeling a little tired, but gave no indication that anything more serious was wrong.
Reflecting on the conversation afterward, Trump said that call could have been his last with Graham, adding that the news of his death came as a genuine shock.
Trump made his remarks on NBC’s Meet the Press, appearing on the very program Graham himself had been booked to join before his death.
Speaking with host Kristen Welker, Trump paid tribute to Graham as one of the greatest people and senators he has ever known, calling him a true American patriot who worked constantly and would be greatly missed.
He had shared a similar message earlier on Truth Social, writing that Graham was always working and describing his death as a major loss.
The two men had built an unusually close relationship over the years, one that evolved considerably over time.
Graham was initially a sharp critic of Trump during the 2016 campaign, at one point warning that nominating him would lead the party to ruin, but the relationship shifted dramatically once Trump took office, and Graham became one of his most trusted allies on Capitol Hill.
Graham went on to chair both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Budget Committee during Trump’s presidency, overseeing the confirmation of numerous federal judges and helping shepherd major legislation through a closely divided Senate.
A Career Built Around Foreign Policy and Cross-Party Friendships
Graham had just returned from a visit to Ukraine, one of roughly ten trips he made to the country since Russia’s invasion in 2022, according to reporting on his travel record.
He met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during that trip, and Zelenskyy later said he was deeply saddened by news of Graham’s death, praising his repeated wartime visits and his consistent advocacy for Ukraine’s defense.
Graham was widely regarded as one of the Senate’s most influential voices on defense and foreign policy, and he remained an outspoken supporter of both Ukraine and Israel throughout his career.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also paid tribute to Graham, describing him as a beloved friend of many decades and saying that both America and Israel had lost a great patriot.
Netanyahu recalled that Graham had personally pushed back on him in private conversations whenever the idea of scaling back American aid to Israel came up, insisting that Israel’s security was inseparable from America’s own.
He described Graham as someone who was consistently clear, candid and encouraging in their exchanges over the years.
Beyond his foreign policy work, Graham was also known in the Senate for his willingness to build relationships across the aisle, something reflected clearly in the tributes that followed his death.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune called him a strong advocate for the United States and a strong ally to freedom loving countries around the globe, adding that Graham had served as a trusted adviser to numerous presidents and colleagues throughout his career.
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner said he and Graham disagreed on plenty over the years but never doubted his love for the country, describing him as a fierce advocate for the causes he believed in, particularly national security and the military.
Fellow South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott said the state had lost a statesman and that he personally had lost a friend, while Democratic Sen. John Fetterman called Graham a foreign policy giant who had always been kind, gracious and thoughtful on a personal level.
Remembered By Family Friends and Longtime Colleagues
Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Sen. John McCain, who was famously one of Graham’s closest friends in the Senate, shared her own remembrance following his death, noting that few of her memories of her father’s political career did not somehow involve Graham as well.
The two senators were known for working closely together across party lines for years, including alongside former Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman on a range of politically difficult issues, and their bond became one of the more enduring friendships in recent Senate history.
Fox News host Sean Hannity, a longtime friend of Graham’s, shared a more personal side of his story, explaining that Graham grew up living above a bar run by his family and stepped up to help raise his younger sister after the early deaths of his parents.
Hannity pushed back on the idea that Graham was primarily a war hawk, saying that what people often missed was his genuine desire to end the war between Russia and Ukraine and to help bring lasting peace to the Middle East, something he reportedly hoped could happen as soon as early fall.
Graham’s death also drew reaction internationally, including sharply divided responses tied to his hawkish record on Iran.
While Ukrainian and Israeli leaders mourned his passing, Iranian state media took a notably different tone, describing Graham in unfavorable terms given his long support for pressure campaigns against Tehran.
Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s former crown prince and a prominent opponent of the current Iranian government, offered a different perspective, crediting Graham with standing alongside the Iranian people in their struggle against the regime.
As tributes continued through the day, Graham was remembered less for any single vote or policy fight and more for the sheer scope of his influence, spanning judicial confirmations, military alliances and decades of relationships built across party lines.
Colleagues repeatedly pointed to his willingness to show up in person, whether that meant traveling to a war zone to meet with allied leaders or spending an evening working the phones to try to broker agreement among fellow senators on a difficult vote.
That instinct to be physically present for the moments that mattered most to him was, by multiple accounts, very much on display right up through his final days in office.
Graham’s death also arrives at a genuinely uncertain moment for Senate Republicans. His seat was already up for grabs in the November midterms, and now the party will need to navigate that race without its incumbent, all while Sen. Mitch McConnell remains hospitalized for an undisclosed health issue that has further narrowed the conference’s already thin working majority.
Exactly how South Carolina officials plan to handle the vacancy in the interim has not yet been detailed, and further updates on both fronts are expected in the days ahead.
His family has asked for privacy as arrangements are finalized, and further details about Graham’s illness are expected to follow in the coming days.
For now, Washington is left processing the sudden loss of a senator whose voice shaped some of the most consequential foreign policy debates of the last two decades, and whose friendships, on both sides of the aisle, outlasted the disagreements that so often defined his early years in Congress.
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