Sen. Lindsey Graham Was Followed by a Documentary Crew at the End of His Life. Here’s What They Discovered Before His Sudden Death
Sen. Lindsey Graham Was Followed by a Documentary Crew at the End of His Life. Here’s What They Discovered Before His Sudden Death
Joseph KonigMon, July 27, 2026 at 9:20 PM UTC
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and President Donald Trump speak with reporters aboard Air Force One on Jan. 4. Graham meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on April 17.Credit: Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty; GPO/Anadolu Agency via Getty -
A documentary crew was following the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham for more than four years before he died suddenly on July 11
The documentarians say they captured hundreds of hours of behind-the-scenes footage of his conversations and meetings with world leaders, including President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
The crew captured Graham offering Netanyahu to convince Trump to attack Lebanon at the start of the Iran war and Elton John singing the senator “Happy Birthday”
A documentary crew followed the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham the four years leading up to his sudden death at 71 on July 11.
The documentarians say they captured hundreds of hours of behind-the-scenes footage of his conversations and meetings with world leaders, including President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried,” Graham says in one clip from the forthcoming documentary, Lindsey’s Game, which was obtained by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, July 26.
In that clip, Graham is watching Trump’s March 3 remarks from the Oval Office, commenting on the war with Iran that the U.S. and Israel launched on Feb. 28 with a bombing campaign that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian leaders.
The early days of the war also saw U.S. and Israeli bombs kill more than 100 schoolchildren, as well as the supreme leader’s son-in-law, eldest daughter, daughter-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.
“He loves blowing stuff up,” Graham says of Trump in the clip. “There are a lot of people inside [who] didn’t want to do it. So, I had my challenges, but President Trump… he’s been a great wartime president.”
Graham went on to compare Trump and Netanyahu to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who led their respective countries through World War II.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speak in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 14.Credit: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg via Getty
Documentarian Alex Holder, a British filmmaker who previously produced a documentary on Trump’s final days in office in his first term, said there’s footage of Graham’s interactions with other world leaders and key players, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and President Joe Biden’s former national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
There’s even footage of Elton John singing Graham “Happy Birthday” over the phone on the senator’s 70th birthday last year, according to Holder.
The documentary also includes behind-the-scenes looks at Graham on the campaign trail with Trump in 2024 and “rare glimpses into Graham’s personal life,” including an “in-depth” conversation with his sister, Darline Graham, a little-known figure who has now replaced him in the Senate and is pursuing a full term of her own.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., accompanied by his sister Darline, left, speaks at the GOP headquarters in Columbia, S.C., on Sept. 1, 2015.Credit: AP Photo/Richard Shiro, File
“The level of access Senator Graham gave our team was truly remarkable,” Holder said in a release. “For more than four years, we documented his work, private conversations, and closed-door meetings with world leaders and policymakers as some of the most consequential events of our time unfolded.”
Graham had long advocated for the toppling of the Iranian government and pushed for U.S. military action against the country as far back as 2010, according to a CNN report at the time.
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But it was not until Trump’s second term that he achieved the latter goal when the U.S. and Israeli forces started bombing the country on Feb. 28.
Thousands have been killed by U.S. and Israeli strikes since then, including at least 1,400 civilians and hundreds of children, according to the BBC. A strike on a school in Minab, Iran, on the first day of the war killed at least 168 people, including 110 schoolchildren.
The Pentagon has contradicted itself on the number of U.S. troops killed since the war began, according to The , but Trump said last week the fighting has killed 18 U.S. service members and the AP reported that more than 500 troops have been wounded.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and President Donald Trump speak with reporters aboard Air Force One on Jan. 4.Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty
According to a report from Axios, Graham joked hours before his death that “I can’t die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization.”
In another clip from Lindsey’s Game shared by CNN on Sunday, Graham speaks with Netanyahu by phone on March 4 and offers to go down to visit Trump at his Miami-area golf course to convince the U.S. president to join the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
That conflict has displaced hundreds of thousands, according to Human Rights Watch, and killed more than 4,300 and wounded more than 12,000 since March 2, the Lebanon Ministry of Public Health said on Sunday.
“I think you have a point, but I’ve been thinking about the other side,” Netanyahu tells Graham. “Right now that’s not our interest. We could do it later.”
“That’s actually good counsel. I’ll put it out there as an idea; we can always go back to it,” Graham responds.
The Atlantic reported on July 13, that Graham spent the months leading up to the war “shuttling between Israel and the White House to help [Israeli] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government press its argument for war.” The magazine reported that he played a key role in convincing Trump to move forward with the bombing campaign.
Months later, the U.S. continues to bomb Iran on a near-daily basis, but negotiations have stalled, and Trump continues to threaten to bomb civilian infrastructure with the end of the war.
President Donald Trump and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., at a rally in North Charleston, S.C., on Feb. 28, 2020.Credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
In the footage shared with CNN, Graham tells Sullivan on a March 4 phone call that he believes in “three to four weeks” the Iranian government will “start losing control of some cities.”
“What we’re trying to do is just get a few cities to fall in the next month, get the Arabs more openly involved,” Graham said. “And just have almost irreversible momentum.”
Graham’s memorial services are scheduled to begin on Tuesday, July 28, in Washington, D.C. He died from a ruptured aorta brought on by chronic heart disease, his office said, citing preliminary findings from the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
on People
Source: “AOL Breaking”
