The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion Will the real Lindsey Graham please stand up?

By
Columnist|
July 7, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was repeatedly booed last weekend at a rally for former president Donald Trump in Pickens, S.C. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
5 min

Pickens, S.C., a picturesque town of about 3,400 people that hugs the Appalachian foothills, seemed an unlikely spot for a Trump campaign rally over the holiday weekend. Odder still was the repeated booing aimed at former president Donald Trump’s frontman, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, a once-favorite son.

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In video clips of the scene, a white-haired yet still youthful Graham smiles and keeps thanking the folks (a crowd of about 50,000) for coming. “Thank you, thank you,” he repeats, as people hurl boos and cries of “traitor!” at his feet. Who were these jackals heckling the senator from Seneca, a town about 30 miles down the road, the bootstrap boy who practically raised his little sister when their parents died?

Surely not the good people of Pickens. Maybe they were Democratic plants or travelers, those political wanderers who shadow Trump as though they were groupies.

Maybe. But Lindsey, as everybody calls him back home, also has a history of troublemaking that might have boomeranged. During the past few years, he has shape-shifted into at least four distinct personas, from Trump-bashing presidential candidate to Trump whisperer, to done with Trump, to head cheerleader for Trump 2024. It’s been downright dizzying.