Björn af Kleen: Trump's Companion Believed the President Could Be Controlled

Senator Lindsey Graham, who died unexpectedly on July 11 at age 71, embodied the Republican Party's remarkable adaptability to Donald Trump. As a correspondent in the U.S., I've thought about Graham almost daily. The senator from South Carolina was Trump's "micro-engineer" in the Senate and his intermediary in Kyiv, Jerusalem, and Brussels. He golfed with Trump weekly and defended him relentlessly in the media. The morning after his death, Graham was scheduled to appear on "Meet the Press" for the 64th time.

Graham's close relationship with Trump revealed a less-discussed aspect of right-wing populism: for those on the inside, driving an authoritarian revolution could be festive, even boisterous. While Trump's politics often appeared to be about anger and revenge, the core of his power was frequently jovial. Graham himself acknowledged Trump was "a lying SOB" but "fun to hang out with."

Journalistic investigations often probed Graham's commitment to Trump. How could such a talented and seemingly principled politician abandon his conservative roots for a place at Mar-a-Lago? What was Graham's ultimate goal? What motivated his capitulation?

During his first decades in Congress, Graham championed an interventionist foreign policy in the spirit of Ronald Reagan and sought bipartisan consensus on climate and immigration. Trump represented the antithesis, showing contempt for democracy both domestically and abroad. Graham's shift is explained by a suggestive theory rooted in his childhood. Growing up in poverty in Central, Georgia, his parents ran a rundown beer and billiards hall. As a boy, Lindsey became a mascot in the bar, a quick-witted jester nicknamed "Stinkball." His parents died young, leaving him to raise himself and his younger sister. To survive in the impoverished American South, they sought comfort and validation from powerful men, the "alpha dogs" Graham learned to manage in the smoky "Sanitary Cafe."

This survival instinct propelled him through patriarchal environments: first as a military lawyer stationed in Europe, then as a congressman and senator in Washington. There, he aligned with war hero John McCain, a Republican "alpha dog" who became his ideological father figure. But when McCain succumbed to brain cancer shortly after Trump's rise, Graham swiftly changed sides. It was ideologically shocking, but consistent with the survival instinct honed in Central.

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He is a lying SOB, but fun to hang out with.