Lindsey Graham still is a Donald Trump sycophant through and through, as evidenced by his birthday message to the former president and convicted felon.
The message posted on X (formerly Twitter) seemed over-the-top, especially since Graham praised Trump’s golf game.
But a quick look behind the scenes reveals that the South Carolina senator thought his initial message didn’t go far enough—and he made a quick edit to the post to make sure to add the word “president” before Trump’s name.
Grahamhas gone from being one of Trump’s early critics to carrying out Marilyn Monroe’s birthday song to John F. Kennedy in the form of a social media post. He has thrown his support behind Trump nearly every step of the way, to the point of getting a little too involved in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results and refusing to accept the 2024 results if Trump doesn’t win. He has bent over backwards to justify Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, criticized the Manhattan district attorney’s office long before Trump was indicted on hush-money charges, and cried foul over the implication of Trump doing anything wrong on January 6, 2021.
It’s a far cry from Graham’s famous quote from 2016: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.” In fact, before Trump’s ascendancy to the White House, Graham was a relative moderate in the Senate, voting to confirm two of Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominees, supporting legislation to create a legal path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and even working on some proposals to tackle climate change.
But as soon as Trump cemented himself in the Oval Office, Graham put his misgivings aside and became Trump’s phone buddy, where they discussed their mutual love of golf. At one point, Graham even promoted Trump’s golf course on his Twitter account. One could be forgiven for forgetting that Trump tweeted Graham’s personal phone number to the public way back during his campaign in 2015.
