Lindsey Graham Demanded to “Break the Bones” of the Russian Economy, Urged Trump to Strike Iran, and Push for Tough Talks with Zelensky

Lindsey Graham was born on July 9, 1955, in the small town of Central, South Carolina, home to fewer than six thousand residents. His parents ran a pool hall and bar. The family lived in extremely modest conditions: all slept in the same room, shared a bathroom with the customers, and heated water for washing on the kitchen stove.

Despite these hardships, Graham enrolled at the University of South Carolina, majoring in psychology. While in college, he endured profound personal losses: first, his mother died from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and just over a year later his father died of a heart attack. At 21, he became guardian to his 13-year-old sister, Darline. In 1977, Graham became the first in his family to earn a college degree and went on to attend the university’s law school. He earned his Juris Doctor in 1981.

In his memoir, My Story, Graham wrote that it was during law school that he developed a passion for public speaking: "Trying a case is like staging a play—only you’re the playwright, the director, and the star performer. I was born for it." In the 1980s, he served as an attorney in the U.S. Air Force, often defending pilots who had tested positive for traces of marijuana.

During this period, he became interested in politics and aligned himself with Ronald Reagan. In 1984, Graham was posted to an Air Force base in West Germany. The experience of serving overseas solidified his “hawkish” views on U.S. foreign policy.

After four years in West Germany, Graham returned to the United States and set his sights on a political career. At campaign events in South Carolina, he focused on criticizing Democratic President Bill Clinton—a strategy that helped him win election to the House of Representatives in 1992 and 1994 by comfortable margins.

"I’d like to think I’m a genius, but the truth is I just happened to be in the right place at the right time," recalled political scientist David Woodard, who managed Graham’s first campaigns. According to him, the only real difference between Graham and his Democratic opponent was that next to Lindsey’s name stood the letter R—signifying his affiliation with the Republican Party.

Woodard noted that Graham was not a staunch opponent of Clinton and did not, in fact, hold a fixed ideological position. His strength lay in his ability to read the mood of his audience and say precisely what it wanted to hear.

Even before joining the Senate, Graham forged a close bond with Vietnam War veteran and one of the most influential Republicans, John McCain. In the 2000 primaries, he backed McCain, who ultimately lost to George W. Bush. Despite the defeat, Graham remained a loyal ally and, according to The New York Times columnist Robert Draper, essentially shared all of his mentor’s views on foreign policy.

In the Senate, Graham quickly established himself as a committed “hawk”—an advocate of active U.S. involvement abroad whenever it served Washington’s interests. Yet after Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 election, he became one of the few Republicans willing to cooperate with the new administration. According to Draper, during Obama’s first eighteen months in office, Graham visited the White House 19 times. "He is more open to engagement than other Republicans," observed Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

In 2013, Graham joined a bipartisan group of eight senators who proposed an immigration reform bill that was relatively liberal by Republican Party standards. Yet his willingness to compromise on that issue was paired with hardline conservative positions on LGBTQ rights. The Human Rights Campaign described him as a consistent opponent of anti-discrimination measures—from the recognition of same-sex marriages to protections against employment discrimination.

Since the start of his career, Graham has regularly had to dispel rumors about his sexual orientation, often linked to the fact that he has never married. When asked about his personal life, the senator replied: "Millions of people live without partners. I don’t think they owe anyone an explanation for why they are single."

In the spring of 2015, Lindsey Graham announced his candidacy for president, making national security the centerpiece of his campaign. "If I’m president of the United States and you try to join ISIS or Al-Qaeda, I’m not going to call a judge," he said. "I’m going to call a drone, and we will kill you."

Despite his hardline rhetoric, much of the conservative electorate distrusted him, viewing his positions as too close to those of the Democrats. By December, it was clear he had no chance in the primaries: Graham dropped out of the race and endorsed Jeb Bush. He was a staunch opponent of Donald Trump’s nomination, in part because of the billionaire’s disparaging remarks about John McCain—Graham’s close friend. Trump had claimed McCain was considered a war hero only because he had been captured.

Graham did not shy away from sharp statements, sometimes going further than other Republicans. In the summer of 2015, he urged Trump "not to be a jackass," and in the spring of 2016, he tweeted: "If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed." Comparing him to Senator Ted Cruz, Graham said it was like choosing between being shot or poisoned. In response, Trump called Graham an idiot and even revealed his phone number during a live interview.

In the 2016 election, protesting Donald Trump’s candidacy, Graham cast his vote for independent politician Evan McMullin. But after Trump’s victory, their relationship began to change. According to The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, this shift was partly due to John McCain’s near withdrawal from politics because of illness. "For Graham, McCain was not just a friend," Bruni wrote. "He gave him a way to be in the spotlight. With Trump, that became easier, and Graham switched vehicles, heading in a new direction."

In March 2017, Donald Trump invited Lindsey Graham to lunch, suggesting they "be friends," and the senator readily agreed. According to investigative journalist Bob Woodward, from that point on Graham effectively became an informal mentor to the president, explaining the intricacies of the legislative process. During Trump’s first term, media reports indicated that the two often spoke by phone several times a day.

Over time, Graham became one of the president’s fiercest defenders. In 2019, he described the impeachment proceedings initiated by the House of Representatives as a "lynching" and declared he would not review the case materials, despite his role as a juror in the trial. During the same period, he demanded that the State Department release documents on possible connections between Joe Biden, his son Hunter, members of the Obama administration, and former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Also in 2019, Graham was appointed chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Five years later, in 2024, he called Trump’s election victory "the greatest comeback in U.S. history," and in January 2025, he became chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

Steve Schmidt, a former manager of John McCain’s presidential campaign and a close associate of Graham, likened American politics to an underwater world: "He’s a small fish circling a large predator and feeding off its scraps. When McCain was around, seen as a noble shark, Lindsey positioned himself as noble too. Now Trump is the shark, and Lindsey circles around him. He’s drawn to power, but he’s realized he can’t get it on his own."

For the past fifteen years, Lindsey Graham has remained one of the most consistent Kremlin critics in American politics. In the early 2010s, he openly supported Georgia, a victim of Russian aggression, and called Russia a threat to young democracies. "I will continue to support Georgia so it can move forward and become a shining example of what can happen after the collapse of the USSR," he said at the time.

In 2013, Graham urged a boycott of the Sochi Olympics in response to Moscow granting asylum to Edward Snowden. After the annexation of Crimea, he called for freezing the assets of those "responsible for the invasion" and suspending Russia’s participation in the G-8 and G-20. He described the signing of the Minsk Protocol in 2014 as a de facto defeat for Ukraine and accused the Obama administration of refusing to provide Kyiv with weapons.

In December 2016, the senator visited the front line in Donbas and assured Ukrainian troops of U.S. support. That same year, he accused Moscow of covering up the war crimes of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and of interfering in U.S. elections. In the summer of 2022, together with Democrat Richard Blumenthal, he secured the Senate’s passage of a resolution calling for Russia to be designated a state sponsor of terrorism—but the White House declined to take that step.

In the spring of 2022, speaking on Fox News, Graham effectively called for the removal of Vladimir Putin, likening it to Brutus’s conspiracy against Caesar. The statement drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. In 2023, he was added to Russia’s registry of extremists and terrorists, and the Russian Interior Ministry issued a warrant for his arrest—likely over a video released by Volodymyr Zelensky’s office in which Graham’s remarks about "Russians dying" were edited together.

In 2024, Graham actively pushed for a joint mineral extraction deal with Ukraine. When negotiations nearly collapsed in February 2025 due to a dispute between Trump and Zelensky, he suggested that the Ukrainian leader either resign or send "someone we can do business with." Yet by April, the agreement had been signed, and in May, Graham visited Kyiv and received Zelensky’s thanks.

In June 2025, he introduced a bill to impose 500 percent tariffs on imports from countries purchasing Russian energy, declaring that such sanctions could "break the bones" of the Russian economy. According to Neue Zürcher Zeitung journalist Isabel Jacoby, Graham remains a key foreign policy adviser to Trump and was instrumental in persuading the president to approve recent strikes on Iran and the resumption of arms deliveries to Ukraine. Still, given Trump’s unpredictability, it is impossible to say with certainty whether the senator’s hardline rhetoric reflects his own independent stance or merely the current direction of the White House.