President Donald Trump used the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to push his controversial voting legislation while remembering his steadfast ally and friend on "Meet the Press" Sunday morning.
Trump Reveals Final Call with Graham
Trump told host Kristen Welker that he and the late senator spoke about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, also known as the SAVE America Act, over the phone Saturday, just hours before Graham’s office announced he’d died after a “brief and sudden illness” at the age of 71.
A somber-sounding Trump celebrated Graham as a “great politician” who was “unique in every way” while telling Welker how the senator was advocating for the president’s voting bill “like crazy.”
“This is a big blow to the SAVE America Act,” Trump said of the bill, which first passed the House last March but had since stalled in the Senate.
Calling Graham an “amazing advocate,” he said he and Graham were planning to meet the following day about the legislation.
Graham's Final Hours
Emergency personnel were called to Graham’s Washington, D.C., home at 8:30 p.m., just hours after the senator had returned from Ukraine, where he had met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In audio of emergency dispatch reviewed by the Washington Post, medics said they were treating a man suffering from cardiac arrest, and CPR was in progress.
Trump did not share any further details about the senator’s death but said he sounded “tired” when they spoke on the phone.
“I thought Lindsey would be living forever,” Trump said, telling Welker that Graham was set for a “big victory” in November’s elections, where he was primed to secure his fifth term in the Senate.
“He was going to win by a lot and was going to have one of his best elections ever, and now he’s got this,” the president said. “Terrible.”
Trump Praises Graham as Ally
President Donald Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) together at the White House on Nov. 6, 2019.
Asked if he had any ideas for who he wanted to fill Graham’s Senate seat, Trump told Welker he had “someone that I think would be great” in mind but that it was “too soon” to share specifics.
Not long after news of Graham’s death broke on Saturday, the president called him “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known” and “a true American Patriot” in a post on Truth Social.
Graham's Evolution from Critic to Ally
Though Trump had found a fierce ally in Graham since entering office in 2016, the senator was not always one of his biggest cheerleaders.
Before Trump cinched the 2016 Republican candidacy, and eventually the White House, Graham said he thought the political outsider would be a ”disaster for the party.”
Questioning the then-reality star’s conservative bona fides, he told reporters, “I think the damage he would do the party would be enormous, and I don’t think he’s qualified to be commander in chief.”
