BARBARA SPRUNT, HOST:
A day before his death, Lindsey Graham was in Ukraine announcing progress with the White House on a Russian sanctions bill.
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LINDSEY GRAHAM: I've never been more optimistic than I am today that we have the formula to end this war.
SPRUNT: For months, Graham lobbied the White House for support, believing the bill would compel Russia to end its four-year assault on Ukraine. It was a top issue for the Air Force veteran turned legislative power broker who spent his career traveling the world pushing an interventionist foreign policy approach.
RICHARD FONTAINE: He never saw a foreign policy set of issues that he didn't want to get involved in.
SPRUNT: That's Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. In 2004, as foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain, he traveled with then-freshman Senator Graham to Ukraine.
FONTAINE: They saw a Russia that was emerging from the end of the Cold War and going in a very different direction - more democratic, more Western friendly, certainly less aggressive - and then take this kind of detour under President Putin. I think that explains why this was such a passion project for Senator Graham for over two decades.
SPRUNT: On Ukraine and other foreign policy matters, Graham became one of President Trump's closest advisers - a far cry from where the two started their relationship in 2015 when they were competing for the GOP presidential nomination. Graham didn't hold back his distaste of the real estate tycoon. Here he is on CNN during the campaign.
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GRAHAM: He's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for.
SPRUNT: But when Trump became president, Graham began to shift gears. He told NPR in 2019 he had come to like Trump personally, and the people of South Carolina expected him to work alongside him.
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GRAHAM: He's proven to me that he's been a better president than I thought about him. Really, I had very low expectations. But what he does is he listens to people, including me and others.
SPRUNT: Fontaine says a prime example is 2018 when Trump threatened to abandon Kurdish allies by withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria.
FONTAINE: Senator Graham brokered an agreement by which Trump would leave some of the troops in place. He came up with some of these ideas and had access to the president to be able to kind of sell this deal, and it worked.
SPRUNT: When it came to Ukraine, it was a particularly delicate dance. Graham's support often clashed with the America First president, along with other Republicans more skeptical of intervention after U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Iran. But at the recent NATO summit in Turkey, Trump praised Ukrainian leadership and offered new U.S. military cooperation - a remarkable shift from earlier antagonistic meetings with Ukraine's president. Former GOP Senator Jeff Flake said Graham's influence is clear.
JEFF FLAKE: Ukraine and the position it's in today owes much to Lindsey Graham for him steering the president in certain directions and certainly working with Congress to make sure that our support for Ukraine continued even over President Trump's objection sometimes.
SPRUNT: Retired General David Petraeus said Graham's support for intervention stretched back to the Iraq War, where he served in active duty as a reservist and visited often with McCain and Senator Joe Lieberman, a trio he dubbed The Three Amigos.
DAVID PETRAEUS: They were always out there. They were out on every recess, and they were hugely helpful. No group had the backs of our men and women in uniform or, frankly, my back more than they did, particularly during the toughest time during the surge in Iraq.
SPRUNT: Petraeus, a longtime friend of Graham, said the South Carolina Republican was open about shifting from Trump critic to confidant.
PETRAEUS: And it was quite simple. He said he wanted to continue to influence our foreign policy. And to do that, he needed to make some concessions in terms of domestic politics and a relationship with the president who he'd criticized when that president was running for office - and developed a very strong friendship with the president.
SPRUNT: That friendship gave Graham the president's ear on Iran, where he pushed Trump to maintain an aggressive military posture, and Israel as one of the Senate's most fervent supporters of supplying the country with military aid. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him a champion of the American-Israeli alliance. Texas Republican Congressman Michael McCaul called Graham a mentor. He said there was a clear through line of Graham's philosophy on global issues.
MICHAEL MCCAUL: We were a sort of Reagan generation, if you will, that believe that America is strongest at home when we are strong abroad, that we're not the isolationist party. We've learned the lessons from World War II - not to be a Chamberlain, but rather a Churchill.
SPRUNT: Over the last year, he says the two worked closely on the Russia sanctions measure. He wants to introduce the bill in the coming days.
MCCAUL: This is Congress' best way to honor his legacy - is to pass this bill as soon as possible.
SPRUNT: He plans to name it after Graham. Barbara Sprunt, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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