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“I spoke with President Trump today, and he is adamantly opposed to this policy,” Graham said Sunday, noting that the former president told NATO allies that Russia “does whatever they want.” He spoke on the Senate floor the day after he said he would let him do whatever he wanted. Larry. “He thinks packages like this should be loans, not gifts,” Graham said.
Mr. Graham’s shift in attitude on aiding Ukraine appears to have been influenced by a more isolationist attitude prevalent within the Republican Party, even one of the most vocal supporters of U.S. intervention abroad, the U.S. says. This would send a stark warning signal to our allies.
This is for a senator who harshly criticized Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy when he ran for president in 2015, including a message that the United States would begin an invasion of Syria. It was a break in a sense. And Air Force veterans have criticized Trump on foreign policy, including his desire to withdraw from Afghanistan and Syria, even though they have been aligned on many other issues since Trump became president. I continued to do so.
Mr. Graham’s recent moves have further strengthened his ties to Mr. Trump, as the former president appears to be on track to win the Republican nomination.
The episode also damaged Mr. Graham’s credibility among colleagues who closely helped shape a bipartisan border policy reform bill that required Republicans to participate in foreign aid in exchange for votes, but ultimately All they did was backtrack and contribute to destroying the policy.
Graham’s work on the border measure was a throwback to his earlier role in the Senate as a negotiator on immigration. Graham, who was a key member of the failed immigration group the Group of Eight in 2013 and the Trump-era negotiating group in 2018, is now firmly in the party’s MAGA wing and has no ties to Republican leadership. He was one of the senators who called for thorough security. Part of the Ukraine bill last fall.
The senator appeared genuinely interested in reaching a deal, publicly defending the negotiations against right-wing attacks and arguing that the policy could help Trump if he is re-elected.
“To those who think we’ll get a better deal if President Trump wins, which I hope we will, I don’t think we will,” Graham told reporters in January. Told. “We have to get 60 votes in the U.S. Senate.”
But some negotiators, who spoke frankly on condition of anonymity, said that after President Trump visited his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida in mid-January, He said he believed Mr. Graham’s tone had changed. Immediately after the visit, President Trump began posting more harsh comments about the bill, and Republican senators began withdrawing from the deal before it was announced. Mr. Graham began to raise more pointed concerns about whether the agreement’s parole provisions were strong enough.
Still, Mr. Graham remained at the table as negotiators tried to allay concerns. He advocated for a stricter revocation of presidential parole at land ports of entry, which was ultimately agreed upon with Mr. Graham’s assent. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), the lead negotiator, outlined the relationship and confirmed that Graham was satisfied with the final agreement. But Graham’s changing demands led her to sometimes privately refer to him as a “chaos monster,” according to two people who heard him use the word.
Just hours before the contract was announced, Graham praised the deal in an interview on Fox News Sunday. “I hope people keep an open mind,” he said. “If you believe our laws are being violated, as President Trump does, you must correct them.”
But the day after the deal was announced, amid Republican pushback, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) declaring the deal “null and void,” and President Trump’s angry rebuttal, Mr. withdrew from the plan. It’s about the people he negotiated with. (Mr. Graham was not alone, however; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who also negotiated the deal, also abandoned the deal amid Republican outrage.)
Tensions between Mr. Graham and Mr. Sinema from the final weeks of negotiations spilled over to the Senate floor last Thursday, when just four Republicans voted in favor of passage. She interrupted his floor speech to lament the flaws in the border agreement. While Mr. Graham spoke, Mr. Sinema said that Mr. Graham helped negotiate the agreement and that the only way to introduce the changes he says he wants is to move forward with the bill and then vote to introduce amendments. I repeatedly pointed out that this is what I should do.
“It has no chance of snowballing through the House,” Graham retorted angrily.
In a brief speech, Graham at one point described the deal’s policies as “good” and at another as a “half-hearted effort,” but then agreed to speak. Then he started speaking again — just enough to tell the Polish prime minister, who had criticized Republican senators who voted against the deal, that he “didn’t care” what he was thinking. It was the length.
The display sparked anger among some fellow negotiators.
“His senior staff was present when he negotiated the bill,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote in a social media post about Sinema’s interactions with Graham. “We negotiated key terms directly with him.”
Not only did Mr. Graham withdraw from the border deal, but on Tuesday he also refused to join 22 of his Republican colleagues in supporting a foreign aid package after border provisions were stripped.
Even for a politician who has shown chameleon-like adaptability to Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, this dramatic change of heart has Graham worried about his political standing in Trump-leaning states. There is speculation that this may or may not be the case. All eyes are on cabinet positions in the future Trump administration.
“Graham has always worked on the premise that he would do what was necessary where he thought he could have an impact…But for those who have watched his independent work over the years, it is It’s disconcerting,” Chip Felkel said. , a communications strategist who has worked on multiple Republican campaigns in South Carolina. “After John McCain’s death, we saw less and less of that independent attitude in him.”
Mr. Graham had a long-standing foreign policy partnership with Mr. McCain, the Arizona senator, but the two began to diverge on several issues before Mr. McCain’s death in 2018.
Some speculate that Mr. Graham, who is not up for re-election until 2026, is responding to the intensity of sentiment among the Republican base regarding Ukraine. “I’m against Trump [on Ukraine] Now it’s a death sentence,” one Republican congressman said on condition of anonymity to discuss the political backlash they are facing. “It’s kind of dangerous for him at this point, given how angry the base is.”
Graham and his staff declined interview requests for this article. But the senator sought to explain his change in position in an hour-long floor speech on Monday. He denounced isolationism as a worldview, criticized the U.S.’s lack of adequate defense spending, and called the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan “heartbreaking.”
But he also declared that he would not support the aid package, after thinking about the issue for “several days” and admitting there had been a “tug of war” with Trump over foreign policy. He has visited Iraq and Afghanistan more than 50 times, many with his friend McCain, and said the U.S. withdrawal from its role around the world would only embolden dictators. .
“But that being said, in order to convince South Carolinians to continue supporting foreign conflicts, I need to know that I understand when they tell me what they think about their country.” We have to prove it to them,” Graham said. “So I’m not going to Munich, I’m going south of the border.”
He encouraged the House to make changes to the package, including turning the aid into loans.
The announcement came as a shock to those who have followed Graham’s career. In recent years, he co-hosted a bipartisan delegation to an international conference called the McCain delegation, after the late senator who was a regular at the conference. In 2017, Mr. Graham told world leaders gathered in Munich that this year would be “the year we kick Russia’s ass in Congress.”
John Herbst, a former ambassador to Ukraine during the Bush administration, said Graham’s pivot to supporting Ukraine “doesn’t send a positive message” to allies. “Now is the time for people who understand America’s national security interests to stand up,” he said.
Mr. McCain used his previous trip to Munich to reassure America’s allies that Mr. Trump’s worldview and hostility to NATO will not undermine Congress’ support for the current world order.
“His old friend Sen. McCain must be rolling in his grave right now,” said Jim Manley, a former aide to the late Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) when he was Senate Majority Leader. ” he said. “They have taken a very hawkish, pro-American, interventionist stance many times. Now, when the stakes couldn’t be higher, he’s acquiesced to Donald Trump’s demands on bended knee. I am.”
Paul Kane contributed to this report.
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