A state funeral service for sitting US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who passed away unexpectedly earlier this month at age 71 from an aortic dissection, was held Tuesday at Washington National Cathedral, drawing an extraordinary cross-section of domestic and international leaders to honor the outspoken foreign policy hawk. The South Carolina Republican died just days after returning from a diplomatic trip to Kyiv, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky – fitting, in the words of former President Donald Trump, who delivered the keynote eulogy, that Graham “died doing the work he was born to do.”
In his 15-minute address to mourners gathered in the cathedral’s nave, Trump remembered Graham as a “giant of the United States Senate” and a “true American original” who left the nation far too soon. Trump reflected on the unlikely evolution of their relationship: the pair traded bitter public attacks during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, when both sought the party’s nomination, but Graham ultimately emerged as one of Trump’s most loyal congressional allies after Trump’s election victory. Trump recalled a viral 2015 incident where he shared Graham’s personal phone number with a rally crowd in retaliation for a profane insult Graham had leveled at him, joking that the senator’s device “exploded” – but quipped that Graham had the last laugh. “While I blew up his phone for one day, we became great friends and Lindsey did not stop calling me for the next 10 years,” Trump told the crowd, eliciting chuckles from assembled mourners. He added that no major global development occurred without Graham weighing in with a clear stance.
Notably, the funeral drew heads of state from two nations Graham championed fiercely throughout his career: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky both attended the service to pay their respects. Throughout his four years in the Senate, Graham staked out a reputation as one of Washington’s most unapologetic foreign policy hawks: he was a leading advocate for robust US military aid to Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, even as congressional Republicans remained deeply divided over the scale of American intervention in global conflicts. He was also one of Israel’s most outspoken supporters in Congress, and pushed publicly for US military action against Iran in his final years in office.
Vice President JD Vance, along with multiple senior officials from the Trump administration, also attended the service, and offered his own tribute that wove personal anecdotes with a summary of Graham’s career. Vance highlighted the pair’s shared love of golf, Graham’s relentless dedication to foreign policy work, and his famously magnetic personality, marked by consistent “vim and vigour.” Fox News host Sean Hannity, another featured speaker, called Graham a “force of nature” and a “true original,” addressing his remarks directly to Graham’s sister Darline Graham, who was appointed by state officials to fill her brother’s remaining Senate term shortly after his death. “You were his life,” Hannity told Darline, who sat in the front pew for the service. The pair shared a decades-long close bond after losing both parents by the time Darline was a teenager; Lindsey Graham, then a young adult, formally adopted his sister to raise her himself.
Washington National Cathedral, the site of many of America’s most high-profile state memorials, has hosted funeral services for sitting senators and former presidents alike. Most recently, former President Jimmy Carter’s memorial service at the cathedral drew all five living former and sitting US presidents last year. In 2018, the cathedral hosted the memorial for John McCain, the late Arizona senator who was one of Lindsey Graham’s closest friends in Congress. While Tuesday’s service was more intimate than the packed funerals for former presidents, the breadth of attendees – ranging from sitting US leaders to foreign heads of state – underscores the outsize influence Graham wielded in Washington despite his relatively short tenure in the Senate. He won his first Senate election in 2022, and represented South Carolina until his unexpected death earlier this month.