The kind of wealth and influence Lindsey Graham had access to probably seemed well worth the moral compromises and severed ties.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
This is not a celebration; it is a lament.
The moment any human being leaves this planet, it is almost always an occasion to mourn.
When death arrives, it is a permanent interruption, an unexpected or unwanted end to a complIcated life in progress. There is an incompleteness that comes: work left undone, plans abandoned, journeys ceased.
In nearly every case, in the wake of someone’s passing, so many possibilities die as well.
This is no different.
Lindsey Graham has passed away, and regardless of our politics, today we should grieve over the loss of the man and the leader he might have been, had he never crossed paths with Donald Trump.
It is a day to wonder how he could have altered this nation for the better, the good he might have authored in the lofty position he occupied.
It is a day to rewind through one person’s very public story and watch how a soul can be sold off in a thousand tiny moral transactions long before their body expires.
Lindsey Graham’s moral collapse over the last decade has been staggering to witness:
In 2015, he called Donald Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” and a “jackass” who did not deserve to be President.
In 2016, he said of the Republican Party, “If we nominate Donald Trump, we will get destroyed… and we will deserve it.”
In 2021, following the January 6th assault on our Capitol, Graham seemingly cut ties with Trump, commenting, “All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”
And in June of 2026, just weeks before his sudden death, at a victory speech that preserved his Senate seat, Lindsey Graham gushed, “I want to thank the big guy, God, Trump comes later. Mr. President, you’re not far behind God, but we’re going to start with him.”
That, in itself, should merit profound grieving across this nation.
It’s difficult for younger people to understand how Lindsey Graham was viewed before Trump’s arrival. He was largely regarded as a reasonable, level-headed politician, always willing and capable of collaboration across the aisle. For those nearly twenty-five years prior, he forged friendships, built alliances, and crafted compromises in ways that became all but impossible for him in his final years.
While campaigning in 2015, Graham famously said of Joe Biden: “If you can’t admire Joe Biden as a person, you’ve got a problem. He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met in politics. As good a man as God ever created.”
I grieve the death of that man; the one capable of seeing the humanity across the aisle, the one who was human first, politician second.
Every one of us should.
I think, deep down, we all do, because we know what it feels like to lose someone long before they die.
We all have Lindsey Grahams in our lives: people whose humanity we have watched erode since the escalator descent of a morally vacant career criminal a decade ago.
We’ve all looked on in helpless disbelief as their bedrock values began to shift, their hard moral lines were erased and redrawn, and their once soft hearts became calloused and closed.
We have all had someone we love die a shell of who they once were, because of their allegiance to a serial grifter whose cultic hold slowly poisoned them. That’s why his death hits close to home.
Lindsey Graham’s ethical implosion is perhaps more understandable than that of the people in our lives, as his proximity to Trump’s power (or the fear of that power being weaponized against him) was likely too great a temptation to withstand. The kind of wealth and influence he had access to probably seemed well worth the moral compromises and severed ties.
For our family members and former friends, it’s much harder to make sense of how it’s all happened; how they were seduced and duped into such a sycophantic tribal allegiance to a man they’d have openly condemned a decade ago. That transformation isn’t as easy to unpack, and many of us will spend the rest of our lives wondering who the people we love might have been.
This week, death took Lindsey Graham’s body.
Trump took his soul and the man he might have been long ago.
For most of us, that kind of grief feels all too familiar.
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