Lindsey Graham's friends stunned by his continued devotion to Trump: 'He's terrible for Lindsey'

In a deep dive into the career of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), friends of the high profile Republican expressed dismay that he has tied himself so close to Donald Trump just a few years after calling the former president "a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot."

The report notes that the South Carolina Republican has occasionally had harsh words for Trump -- including criticizing him after the January 6th Capitol riot -- but continues to return to the fold even though it hurts the Republican Party and his own reputation.

"Mr. Graham's reaffirmed devotion has come to represent something more remarkable: his party's headlong march into the far reaches of Trumpism," the report states. "That the senator is making regular Palm Beach pilgrimages as supplicant to an exiled former president who inspired the Capitol attack and continues to undermine democratic norms underscores how fully his party has departed from the traditional conservative ideologies of politicians like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Mr. Graham's close friend John McCain."

In an interview, Graham admitted that he is attempting to help Trump reform his image, stating, "What I say to him is, 'Do you want January the 6th to be your political obituary? Because if you don't get over it, it's going to be.'"

Friends of Graham on both sides of the aisle are sympathetic to his loyalty to the president who lost the White House, the Senate and the House in four years, while at the same time lamenting that the South Carolina Republican doesn't seem to understand the damage he is doing to his own reputation in the process.

According to Mark Salter, the ghostwriter of Graham's autobiography, "Trump is terrible for the country, he's terrible for the Republican Party and, as far as I'm concerned, he's terrible for Lindsey."

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said he considers Graham a close friend before warning, "Lindsey is playing high-risk politics. He is pinning the hopes of the Republican Party on a very unstable person."

The report goes on to note that Graham -- since Trump lost the election -- has taken to playing to both sides, with the Times reporting, "In the days following the election, he scrambled to stay on Mr. Trump's good side, publicly urging him not to concede until he had exhausted all his legal challenges and listening calmly on late-night phone calls as the president raged about a stolen election. He even wrote a $500,000 check to aid Mr. Trump's legal defense."

"But privately he was already reaching out to Mr. Biden and counseling Mr. Trump to ramp down his rhetoric. And he steadfastly refused to appear at news conferences with Mr. Trump's legal team or repeat their false claims — which annoyed the president and infuriated his son Donald Jr., always a Graham skeptic, retweeting stories with a "#whereslindsey" hashtag when he felt the senator was not standing up for his father," the Times reported.

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