Raymond J. de Souza: Lindsey Graham fought for Ukraine to his dying breath

The late senator was criticized for his cozy relationship with Trump, but this was the price he paid to sway the administration on Ukraine

Regarding the late U.S. senator Lindsey Graham, President Donald Trump had lavish praise, the kind he customarily reserves for tyrants. That’s a heavy burden for any man to carry to his grave, though Graham earned it. Such was the posterior osculation he offered the president after formerly castigating him as a reckless, bigoted nutjob.

About Trump, Graham blew cold then hot, then cold and then as hot as can be. He ran against him for president in 2015 — the “nutjob” assessment — and then converted after Trump won the presidency. At the end of Trump’s first term, after the siege at the Capitol seeking to prevent the count of electoral college votes — with threats of violence against then-vice-president Mike Pence — Graham declared: “Count me out.

Enough is enough.” He quickly recounted, calculating that while Trump had lost the 2020 election — a courageous position to hold in Trumpworld — he had not lost the Republican party. So enough was not quite enough, after all.

With Trump, it never is. “Graham’s journey from neoconservative gadfly to fierce Never Trumper to President Trump’s drooling fanboy could serve as a road map to the moral, intellectual and institutional decay of the party of Ronald Reagan,” wrote Baker. But the “higher purpose” of the drooling was to maintain a position among the other fanboys, such that Trump might listen to him.

Trump’s second term includes a Vice-President JD Vance boasting that, “One of the things I’m proudest that we’ve done in this administration is ... the United State is not buying weapons and sending them to Ukraine anymore.” The same vice-president boorishly shouted at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.

Trump joined in that ambush in February 2025; in August, Trump flew to Alaska to literally roll out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and to bond with him in the presidential limousine. Sen. Graham died hours after returning from his 10th trip to Ukraine since Putin launched his full-scale war in 2022. Given that the war has closed the airspace, the trip to Kyiv requires a 10-hour overnight train journey from Poland.

It is not for the faint of heart, nor fair-weather friends. Graham announced in Kyiv that he had been successful in negotiating — with the White House! — new American sanctions on Russia.

Given that many Trump fanboys have more affection for Putin than Zelenskyy, that was not a small achievement. The new sanctions package still needs to be voted upon by Congress and for Trump not to change his mind. Some have argued that it should be approved quickly as a posthumous tribute to Graham, who never wavered in his support for Ukraine and his assessment of the Russian threat.

Yet without Graham’s voice in the president’s ear — he called Trump upon returning to Washington on Saturday, just hours before he died suddenly — might the fanboys prevail? Might the sanctions package be derailed without Graham on hand, not only to whisper but to perform the osculatory obeisance? A man’s final words carry extra weight so, whatever else might be said about Graham’s long career, his final trip, his final presence, his final efforts to support Ukraine are a worthy testament.

He played a critical role in an administration besotted with Putin. Trump promised a solution to Russia’s war against Ukraine “within 24 hours.” There are two ways a war can end in a single day: the invader can turn around and go home, or the invaded can surrender.

Trump’s plan was for the latter, hence the explosion in the Oval Office when Zelenskyy declined. Trump entrusted the Ukraine file — as well as Gaza and Iran — to special envoy Steve Witkoff, his golf buddy and crypto-trading real estate developer. Witkoff has made eight trips to Russia to see Putin, encouraging him to accept a Ukrainian surrender, if only the Trump administration could arrange it.

Witkoff has refused to visit Ukraine, which Zelenskyy has understatedly characterized as “disrespectful.” But why would Witkoff visit Kyiv? He knows that coming to advise a surrender would be fruitless.

Given the manifest preferences of Vance and Witkoff, the fact that Trump has not entirely abandoned Ukraine is a testimony to Graham’s constancy. He was at the NATO summit in Ankara last week, before travelling to Kyiv, and saw his efforts pay off in Trump’s agreement to license Ukrainian production of Patriot missiles. It may be hoped, though Graham never showed it, that he resented that his price of admission was fealty to Trump, and biting his tongue over the administration taking Putin’s side.

If he did consider it the humiliation it was, and he willingly paid it for the sake of Ukraine, then let that stand as a redeeming part of his legacy. Requiescat in pace. National Post