U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham held the attention of Columbia Rotarians and their guests for more than an hour Monday as he spoke and answered questions about more than two dozen complex political, cultural and international news topics.
Speaking without notes or teleprompter, the 23-year veteran Senate Republican moved with ease in discussing matters from Ukraine to Social Security to artificial intelligence to Taiwan and to the future of South Carolina’s two abandoned, partially built nuclear reactors in Fairfield County.
“This was his best performance at a Rotary meeting,” said longtime Rotarian Frank Brown, who has seen Graham speak over the years. “He didn’t speak to us as a group of Republicans, but as a group of Americans, giving us his knowledge of things, and I was impressed with his knowledge and his ability to speak so clearly.”
Graham, 69, from rural Oconee County, now roams the corridors of American political power, appearing regularly on national television news shows and gets quoted in national newspapers. As a kind of “Trump whisperer,” Graham is an adept smooth speaker who advises and mostly defends President Donald Trump, plays golf with him and visits Trump’s Mar-a-Largo resort in Florida. Graham is also known as a fervent supporter of both Ukraine and Israel.
One heartfelt note was sounded during the Rotary question-and-answer period, when one Rotarian, John Bakhaus, spoke to Graham about a recent event that had sent shock waves around not only the United States but throughout Europe — the televised exchange between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office by President Donald Trump.
Many observers viewed the volatile encounter as an American president allying himself with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, whose forces invaded Ukraine in 2014. Graham, however, praised Trump at the time and told reporters he viewed Zelenskyy’s comments as “disrespectful,” and said Zelenskyy needs to “resign” or change his ways.
Bakhaus told Graham, “I think his (Trump’s) intention was to embarrass a duly elected president of a country at war, and it really made me sad.”
“You broke my heart,” Bakhaus told Graham.
Replying to Bakhaus, Graham indicated he may have spoken out of frustration because he had been “working my ass” off to try to get a U.S.-Ukrainian deal only to see it scuttled in the Oval Office dust-up. Graham also said he respects Zelenskyy and predicted he will go down in history “as a Churchill-type leader” whose inspiring leadership was instrumental in defeating Hitler in World War II.
But, said Graham, Churchill lost his position as British prime minister soon after World War II ended in Europe and Zelenskyy needs to not pick fights with his allies.
Graham also made it clear he took issue with Trump’s current pause of military weapons and battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That pause has bewildered America’s longtime European allies who have believed for 80 years since the end of World War II they could count on U.S. standing with democracies and not with an autocratic country such as Russia that invades other countries.
And any peace deal with Ukraine should come with ironclad guarantees to protect that country’s long term security, Graham said.
“If you trust Putin, you’re making a huge mistake,” Graham said. “He will change his behavior only when the pain is too great.”
Guarantees in any peace deal must include European “boots on the ground” serving as a trip wire to Russian incursions and an American security guarantee to backstop those forces, Graham said. Ukraine should also sign a deal giving the U.S. access to its vast stores of minerals, he said.
“Do the minerals deal and let Putin know we will defend our interests.... Once we have a deal valuable to our economy, I wouldn’t want to be the guy who tries to take it away,” Graham said, adding perhaps not entirely in jest, “The best thing you could do is build a Trump golf course and a Trump hotel.”
About 80 Rotarians and their guests attended the hour long session at Seawell’s on Rosewood Drive. Also present was longtime U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-Lexington, who introduced Graham and said after the lunch he in general agreed with everything Graham said.
Other topics the 69-year-old Graham touched on included:
▪ Coming up with a bipartisan fix to Social Security, which is slated to start reducing payments in the 2030s. “I would gladly take a little bit less if it would help to make sure that people who need it more than I do get it,” said Graham, who makes $176,000 as senator, plus income from a military pension and Social Security.
▪ Russia’s motivation for invading Ukraine in 2022 was that Putin wants to rebuild the old Soviet empire and “he’ll keep going until somebody stops him.”
▪ Iran’s leader is developing a nuclear bomb strike capability to hit at Israel and he must be stopped soon, either through diplomacy or military means.
▪ If the U.S. doesn’t achieve a good solution in Ukraine, that will encourage China. “If we’re seen to have sold Ukraine out, there goes Taiwan... China’s watching every move.”
▪ Artificial intelligence — “whatever it is” — is coming, and one thing it needs is giant data centers, which themselves need huge amounts of electric power. “Between (expanding numbers of) electrified vehicles and going into the AI economy, the demand for power in this country will double in the next 20-30 years.”
▪ The half-built nuclear plants at the V.C. Summer plant north of Columbia must be finished to provide more electrical power. “I am hell-bent on getting them back up. We’re going to need power in this state,” Graham said to applause. “The demand for power is going to be insatiable almost.”
After the meeting, Bakhaus said he said he felt better, now that he had spoken his mind to Graham on how he perceived Trump’s treatment of Zelenskyy. “I’m just glad I had the courage to do it today.”
JM
The State
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John Monk has covered courts, crime, politics, public corruption, the environment and other issues in the Carolinas for more than 40 years. A U.S. Army veteran who covered the 1989 American invasion of Panama, Monk is a former Washington correspondent for The Charlotte Observer. He has covered numerous death penalty trials, including those of the Charleston church killer, Dylann Roof, serial killer Pee Wee Gaskins and child killer Tim Jones. Monk’s hobbies include hiking, books, languages, music and a lot of other things.