Jul 13, 2023 5 min read

Pickens, S.C., a picturesque town of about 3,400 people that hugs the Appalachian foothills, seemed an unlikely spot for a Trump campaign rally over the holiday weekend. Odder still was the repeated booing aimed at former president Donald Trump’s frontman, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, a once-favorite son.

In video clips of the scene, a white-haired yet still youthful Graham smiles and keeps thanking the folks (a crowd of about 50,000) for coming. “Thank you, thank you,” he repeats, as people hurl boos and cries of “traitor!” at his feet. Who were these jackals heckling the senator from Seneca, a town about 30 miles down the road, the bootstrap boy who practically raised his little sister when their parents died?

Surely not the good people of Pickens. Maybe they were Democratic plants or travelers, those political wanderers who shadow Trump as though they were groupies.

Maybe. But Lindsey, as everybody calls him back home, also has a history of troublemaking that might have boomeranged. During the past few years, he has shape-shifted into at least four distinct personas, from Trump-bashing presidential candidate to Trump whisperer, to done with Trump, to head cheerleader for Trump 2024. It’s been downright dizzying.

“What in the world has happened to Lindsey Graham?” people have been asking nearly every other day for the past seven years. My weary response has been a shrug, but two pivotal events seem to have changed Graham in ways that probably wouldn’t strain a psychologist’s analytical skills. One was the loss of his pal and war hero, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose death five years ago left his wingman without a lead pilot.

The other event came two years earlier: the gobsmacking twist of history that put Trump in the White House. Overnight, it seemed, the charmingly honest and witty senior senator from South Carolina became Trump’s Rasputin, walking alongside him, riding in the presidential golf cart, speaking to and for him.

The president seemed to like Graham, which was surely flattering. But there’s more to see in this picture. The 6-foot-3 Trump towers over the 5-foot-7 Graham, unavoidably suggesting a power differential. One thing about taller people that can’t be ignored or dismissed: When they’re standing, others are forced to look up to them – and the taller person doesn’t mind it.

To his dubious credit, Graham had Trump’s ear as no one else did. Insiders have told me that Graham could speak bluntly to Trump, steering him away from some of his riskier impulses. As a South Carolinian, I found some comfort in this assessment. I liked to think our senator was keeping a close watch on Trump and having a little fun on the side. There’s no crime in mixing business with pleasure.

But mixing up voters by exhibiting ever-shifting loyalties can be detrimental to one’s political health. Graham seems to be as confused as anyone. He doesn’t just put a finger to the wind. Given his catalog of inconsistencies, he might well be consulting a Magic 8 Ball.

“Should I condemn Trump for the Jan. 6 attacks?”

It is decidedly so.

“Should I endorse Trump for president?”

It is certain.

Inadvertently, Graham has managed to unite pro- and anti-Trump factions by making himself their common enemy. It wasn’t always thus. During the 2016 presidential race – in which Graham also was a candidate, albeit exiled to the kids’ table – anti-Trumpers couldn’t get enough of him. He said out loud what they were thinking, calling Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.”

In 2020, Trump supporters in South Carolina liked Graham well enough to help reelect him, if barely. But any contrarian word from him about their leader curdles their blood. They’ve never forgiven Graham for declaring his break with Trump after Jan. 6. “Count me out,” he said on the Senate floor. “Enough is enough.”

His words created a glimmer of hope that, at long last, he was reentering his body as the old Lindsey.

At his core, Graham is more loyal to his country than to Trump, and Jan. 6 was, at the time, a breach too far. But now he seems to have put the Capitol riot away and is again all in. The New York indictments against Trump, he said, amount to a “politically motivated prosecution” that will “enormously help Trump in South Carolina” in 2024.

The last part is doubtless true, but the question remains: What does Graham really think? He says he supports Trump’s policies, minus the vow to defund the FBI and the Justice Department. What’s more important, though, is that Graham’s constituents love Trump. Republican politicians in the Palmetto State all but sweep the path before him when he visits. And Graham obviously believes Trump has the nomination sewn up.

If Pickens was any indication of Trump’s loyalty to him, however, Graham should watch out.

Taking the mic from Graham last Saturday, Trump tried to hush the crowd, and tossed his fair-weather pal a deflated life preserver. With sneering bravado disguised as compassion, he declared, “We’re going to love Lindsey Graham.” (Boooooo.) “I know, I know, he’s half and half, but when I need him, he’s there.” (Boooooo.)

“He’s good, and we know the good ones, don’t we?”

Crickets.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for The Washington Post.