Sen. Lindsey Graham is taking a victory lap after helping to convince the president to strike Iran.
Graham, whose long-running push for a hard line against Tehran prompted a colleague to dub him a “war pimp,” told Politico of a 2024 round of golf with Trump where he urged the president to “blow some s–t up.”
He was speaking from his office on Capitol Hill, where, on Tuesday, he publicly called on Trump to join Israel in a fresh bombing campaign in Lebanon. In the sit-down, he described how he and the president thrashed out terms to expand the Abraham Accords, Trump’s 2020 landmark Middle East peace package.
“We were thinking about this early, early on about how Iran is a spoiler for expanding the Abraham Accords and stability in the Mideast,” Graham said. “I told him before he took office … if you can collapse this terrorist regime, that’s Berlin Wall stuff.”
Graham said he had intensified his face-to-face lobbying in recent weeks, as Trump publicly teased an operation in Iran. The president continually said he and high-ranking White House officials preferred “diplomacy,” but the administration soon unleashed “Operation Epic Fury.”
The two discussed the matter just 48 hours before U.S. military pilots took to the air alongside Israeli Defense Forces airmen.
Graham said the “real contest” was to curry GOP approval, with the more America First-inclined in the party very resistant to another war in the region.
Graham and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee were two of the only vocal backers, insiders told Politico.
Graham talked of the threat of Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities on the TV circuit, while privately appealing to Trump’s propensity for war. Despite claiming to be the “Peace President,” Trump has now attacked more countries than any other U.S. president in modern history.
“There was a real fight not to do it,” Graham bragged. “Let Israel do it by itself or just not do much. So, we talked a lot about this: ‘Mr. President, you want to have your fingerprints on this. You want them to know America will fight.’”
Graham said Trump was buoyed by the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January. Graham added, however, that he wasn’t sure if Trump would follow through until he ordered the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, to move to the Middle East last month.
“He’s a hard sell, but when you sell him, he’s all in,” said Graham.
One unnamed White House insider told Politico the South Carolina Republican had an outsized influence on Trump’s decision to attack Iran.
Graham and Trump are now working towards enshrining the normalization of Israel-Arab relations with a Senate-ratified treaty, he claimed.
Graham is back on the TV circuit, pitching the plan and stroking Trump’s ego. “The mothership of terrorism is sinking. The captain is dead. The largest state sponsor of terrorism—Iran—is close to collapsing. The leader of the largest state sponsor of terrorism and his inner team are dead…Well done, President Trump,” he said on Meet the Press on Sunday.
His charm offensive, he says, is working. “He called me and said … ‘I like that—stay on TV,’” he said. “Something tells me I will.”
For all his boasting, some in his own party think Graham is war-crazy. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said he should be “banned from going to the White House,” though he later claimed this was “sarcasm.”
Doug Stafford, Paul’s chief political adviser, called Graham a “warmongering fool.”
Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett dismissed a call Tuesday from Graham to go deeper into Trump’s new war in the Middle East by saying, “Lindsey hasn’t seen a fist fight he hasn’t wanted to turn into a bombing, right? So I just take it with a grain of salt, dude.”
The White House has been asked to comment on Graham’s comments.
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