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Normal procedure in the immediate aftermath of an unexpected death is to shower the deceased with praise, irrespective of whether it is deserved.
Donald Trump, commemorating Lindsey Graham in recent days, has taken a different tack, sometimes extolling the South Carolina senator’s virtues but at other times rather diminishing the newly deceased ۷۱-year-old.
Add eulogies to the list of things Trump does with total confidence and questionable skill.
On Monday, for example, in an interview with Fox News, Trump remembered Graham as someone who called him too much, as a poor golfer and, in the manner of a person remembering a pet labrador, as someone who “loved being outside”.
There was praise, sure, but it was tempered with criticism, as if the president’s famously fragile ego meant he needed to assert dominance over Graham, even after the latter’s death.
Invited to remember Graham in that Fox News interview, Trump responded: “He was a great guy, and he was a friend. He would call me all the time. He would just … I’d say: ‘Stop calling me, Lindsey.’”
Trump added: “He was just – he was amazing. You know, he just didn’t stop and he would be – he was a worker. He was a total workaholic politician. Now, some people don’t call that work. Some people call that a lot of talking. But everybody loved him.”
On Truth Social, Trump was more enthusiastic, peppering his tribute with exclamation marks.
“Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead!” Trump announced on Sunday night. “He was always working, and was a true American Patriot. Lindsey will be greatly missed!!!”
And then he pivoted to funeral director with his last line: “DETAILS AND ARRANGEMENTS TO FOLLOW. So sad!”
Trump’s backhanded compliments and mixed reviews spoke to the complicated relationship he had with Graham. While running for president in ۲۰۱۶, Graham described Trump as a “jackass” and “a race-baiting bigot”. After Trump won that election, Graham made a complete U-turn, becoming – like most of his Republican colleagues – a Trump lickspittle, but after the January ۶ insurrection, he (briefly) broke with the president.
“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey – I hate it to end this way,” he said in a speech at the time. “Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he’s been a consequential president but today, first thing you’ll see. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”
Graham reversed course soon after, returning to the Trump fold and just last month praising the president as “not far behind God”. But Trump is not known for his short memory when it comes to disloyalty.
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“He had one bad moment, that was the Jan ۶ thing, when he stood up: ‘All right, now I’ve had it. That’s it. I can’t do it any more,’” Trump told Fox News.
“Then he called me about ۴۰ minutes later and he said: ‘Did I really say that? I can’t believe it,’ and he took it back. So I give him a ۹۹ instead of a ۱۰۰.”
Trump went on to gloat about how he won the ۲۰۱۶ Republican primary in South Carolina, after Graham was forced to suspend his campaign.
However much Trump appreciated Graham’s subservience, he just couldn’t drop that sporadic criticism.
“He’d play golf with people and you just liked him,” Trump remembered of Graham on Monday. “It wasn’t that he was a great striker of the ball it wasn’t, he wasn’t exactly a perfect – he wasn’t Jack Nicklaus, he was not Tiger.”
There was something revealing across all of Trump’s comments: a reminder, perhaps, that Trump’s fragility means he always has to be number one, always has to be dominant – even if the person he is dominating is now dead.
