BS Summary: This article contains 26 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Halo Effect, and False Dilemma, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 29.5% saturation with 338 hits. Analysis detected 1,923 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,145 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 49.1% and a BS Rank of 48% (11,462 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 52.40% of the article peer group.
Lindsey Olin Graham, whose soft South Carolina drawl belied a fierce ambition that carried him from sweeping the floor of his father’s small-town barroom to commanding the floor of the United States Senate, died unexpectedly on July 11.
He was 71.
Graham’s office reported his death in an early morning July 12 news release, noting that he’d “passed away from a brief and sudden illness.”
A preliminary report from the Washington, D.C. medical examiner’s office later indicated that Graham died from an aortic dissection — a tear in the main artery that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body.
On July 13, S.C.
Gov.
Henry McMaster named Graham’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone, to complete her brother’s Senate term, which ends in January 2027.
(She will be known as Darline Graham in the Senate.)
A special GOP primary election will be held on Aug. 11 to select a new nominee to face general election opponents, including Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, in the fall.
Graham’s death came just one day after his return from Ukraine, his tenth trip to the embattled democracy since Russia invaded in 2022.
A foreign policy hawk who was said to be Ukraine’s best friend in President Donald Trump’s inner circle, Graham used his final trip to highlight Ukraine’s wartime successes and to call for tougher U.S. sanctions on Russian oil.
Trump, who said he’d spoken with Graham in the hours before his death, was among the first to offer condolences in a 3:21 a.m. social media post, calling him “one of the greatest people and senators I have ever known.”
“He was always working, and was a true American patriot,” Trump wrote.
“Lindsey will be greatly missed!!!”
Public condolences and remembrances poured in through the rest of the night and into the rest of Sunday, as leaders across the nation and around the world lauded the politically controversial but personally well-liked senator for his service to the nation.
Gov.
Henry McMaster said he and his wife Peggy were “devastated” by the news, calling Graham a “steadfast friend” and “the fiercest of fighters for South Carolina and America.”
“We grieve with [Graham’s sister] Darline, his family and his devoted staff,” McMaster said in a release.
“May God hold him gently in the palm of his hand.
We shall not see his likes again.”
Meanwhile, former national Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison, who ran an unsuccessful Senate campaign against Graham in 2020, added his voice to the bipartisan condolences, saying he was “deeply saddened” by Graham’s passing.
“Lindsey and I had our share of political disagreements, and those differences were often significant,” Harrison said.
“But today is not a day for politics.
It is a day to recognize a life of public service and to extend our prayers to those who loved him.”
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Graham “a beloved friend.”
“May his values and initiatives continue to guide us toward victory and peace, and may his memory forever be a blessing,” he said.
And in a social media post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Graham was “a true defender of freedom and the values that make our world safer.”
“America and the world have lost a determined leader,” Zelensky said, noting that the two had met twice during the senator’s trip.
Graham’s Ukraine visit was the final public act in a life that began in 1955 in the small Pickens County town of Central, S.C.
His parents, Millie Walters and Florence James Graham, ran the Sanitary Cafe, a bar and pool hall on Main Street.
The family, which later included his younger sister Darline, lived in a cramped room behind the business, Graham later said.
They eventually moved into a nearby trailer.
“It’s not a log cabin like Abe Lincoln,” Graham’s law school roommate Warren Mowry told PBS in 2015.
“But he grew up in a mobile home, which is South Carolina’s equivalent of it, I guess.”
Like many South Carolinians, Graham’s ticket upwards was the local public school, college at the University of South Carolina and U.S.
Air Force ROTC — a path that was complicated but not interrupted by the death of his parents in the mid-1970s while he was still in school.
After earning undergraduate and law degrees at USC, Graham served as an active-duty U.S.
Air Force lawyer from 1982 to 1989.
He then moved back to the Upstate, where he won a seat in the S.C.
House in 1992.
Graham followed that up two years later with a win in the U.S.
House race to replace retiring Third District Democratic Rep.
Butler Derrick and ride the national GOP wave that made Georgia’s Newt Gingrich the first Republican speaker of the U.S.
House in 40 years.
After making a national name for himself as a House prosecutor in the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, Graham was elected to the Senate three years later, following the retirement of U.S.
Sen.
Strom Thurmond.
Though known to most Americans primarily as a TV talking head — it’s no accident that he was second only to his friend, the late Sen.
John McCain, in Meet the Press appearances when he died — Graham was also a quiet master of the Senate, eventually chairing both the Judiciary and Budget committees.
From those perches, Graham helped orchestrate the confirmation of hundreds of federal judges for presidents of both parties, and secured passage of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” budget plan, which slash taxes for the wealthy, health care spending and food assistance.
But it was his sometimes rocky partnership with the equally TV-rapt Trump that dominated the final years of Graham’s professional life, leading to a decade of zigs and zags that occasionally left even his most ardent admirers wondering where his deepest principles lay:
Was he the bipartisan deal-maker who tried to pass comprehensive immigration reform — or the hard-right restrictionist who supported Trump’s second-term crackdown?
Was he the 2016 GOP presidential primary candidate who called Trump “unfit for office” — or the golfing buddy who later insisted “there’s a method to the madness”?
Was he the longtime JAG Corps attorney who extolled the rule of law — or the Trump confidante who first condemned and then excused the January 6 assault on the U.S.
Capitol?
And perhaps, at bottom: Was his sometimes-fawning latter-day friendship with Trump a betrayal of the ideals that first brought him to Washington — or a carefully calculated strategy to protect them?
Asked once by the journalist Mark Leibovich to explain why he always found his way back to Trump, Graham’s answer could be read either way.
“Try to be relevant,” he said.
For decades, from Central to Washington to Tel Aviv and Kyiv and beyond, he was.
Jack O’Toole is Statehouse bureau chief for Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper.
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