By Nolan D. McCaskill and Jacob Bogage
WASHINGTON, July 28 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump eulogized Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Tuesday as a fixture of national politics and unflinching foreign policy hawk, as the leaders of Israel and Ukraine joined Washington's most powerful at his funeral.
Earlier in the day, lawmakers paid tribute at the Capitol Rotunda, remembering one of the last prominent Republicans to advocate for muscular U.S. military power abroad as gregarious, funny and persuasive.
"He was extremely hawkish – he never saw a war that he didn't like," Trump said. "Nothing of significance happened anywhere in the world without Lindsey Graham having a view on it."
Graham denounced Trump early in his political career before becoming a staunch supporter, and Trump mourned his fellow Republican as both a favorite golfing buddy and an essential confidant in navigating partisan politics in Washington.
Graham, a South Carolina Republican who died suddenly from a heart ailment on July 11 at age 71, regularly called for an interventionist U.S. role on the world stage. He strongly backed both Israel and Ukraine, and both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy traveled to Washington to pay tribute on Tuesday.
POWERS OF PERSUASION
At the Capitol ceremony, Vice President JD Vance recalled him as a compelling figure in the Senate whose risqué jokes could make him laugh to the point of abdominal cramps.
"Because he loved people, he saw that the Senate, at its very best, could be a deliberative body geared towards persuading people," Vance said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, "there was no one, no one, who took his job more seriously than Lindsey Graham, but also, no one was more capable of cracking up a room during the work week here in Washington."
They also recalled Graham's charm working on leaders of U.S. allies. Graham met with Zelenskiy in Kyiv only a day before his death, the 10th time he had visited Ukraine since Russia's 2022 invasion. On Tuesday the Senate was expected to vote on a bipartisan package of new sanctions on Russia that Graham spent his final days trying to push across the finish line.
Graham was one of Trump's most visible allies, making frequent appearances on cable television news shows to tout the administration's policies. In recent months, he had been a stalwart defender of the unpopular Iran war.
His staunch, sweeping and often vivid defense of his positions also drew fierce opposition from Democrats and others. He faced criticism for a maximalist approach to war, including advocating for the flattening of Gaza after the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, for saying there was no systemic racism and his joking remarks about the country's history of racial segregation.
"If you're a young African-American, an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state," Graham said in a debate forum in 2020. "You just need to be conservative, not liberal."
SISTER VIES TO SUCCEED HIM IN SENATE
Graham had been running for a fifth term in the Senate after winning the South Carolina Republican primary in June. His sister, Darline Graham, was appointed by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster to fill the remainder of his term.
She has announced her intention to seek a full six-year term in November, with Trump’s endorsement. The Democratic candidate, pediatrician Annie Andrews, is considered a long shot given South Carolina’s strong Republican lean.
Lindsey Graham served as his sister’s guardian after their parents died when she was still a girl.
A former Air Force lawyer and a member of South Carolina’s Air National Guard, Graham served in the state legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning his Senate seat in 2002.
He briefly ran for president in the 2016 election, when he was adamantly opposed to Trump’s candidacy; he called the future president a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” on CNN.
But he eventually became one of Trump’s most loyal backers in the Senate, and the two were frequent golf partners.
In addition to Tuesday's ceremonies in Washington, there will be funeral services for Graham on Wednesday in South Carolina, where he will be buried.
(Reporting by Nolan D. McCaskill in Washington and Joseph Ax in New York; Writing by Joseph Ax and Jonathan Allen; editing by Scott Malone and Deepa Babington)
