In This Episode
TRANSCRIPT
Erin Ryan: Welcome to another episode of This F*cking Guy, the show that spotlights one fucking guy making America worse and explains why they suck. I’m Erin Ryan, host of Crooked Media’s Hysteria Podcast.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: And I’m Alyssa Mastromonaco, the other host of Crooked Media’s Hysteria podcast.
Erin Ryan: Today’s subject has many nicknames, Gramnesty, Lapdog Lindsey, Flimsy Lindsey, Leningrad Lindsey, Lady G, Miss Lindsey, America’s most bloodthirsty Disney adult, aka Mr. Bubblewand, aka the Gamecock Chickenhawk himself, but his friends call him South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Police to his face.
Erin Ryan: Lindsey Graham suffers simultaneously from two conditions that combined make him one of America’s most formidable pussies. First one is called Sidekick Syndrome. That’s where a man can’t function unless they’ve got a stronger man to duck behind. People with Sidekick Syndrome really get riled up, encouraging the stronger guy to do stuff that they don’t have the juice to pull off themselves.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: That get-em-boss energy.
Erin Ryan: Yeah, get-em-boss. A sidekick can never be a henchman, though, because a henchman actually gets their hands dirty, and the only fights Lindsey Graham has gotten in have been with gay rumors and alcoholism. Two battles he’s losing. But more on that later. The other condition Graham suffers from is known as Seize Him syndrome. Seize Him syndrome is related to sidekick syndrome, but the two conditions differ in one very important way. The sidekick syndrome afflicted need to hide behind higher status men, Seize Him syndrome prompts sufferers to hide-behind lower status but physically stronger men, your police officers, your soldiers, your ICE agents. And that’s why Lindsey Graham, who is about as physically threatening as the Pillsbury Doughboy, but with the bloodthirsty gleam in his eye that evokes Hannibal Lecter, is such a giant pussy. Surrounded on all sides by men who Graham expects to perform the violence he lusts after on his behalf.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: That’s quite a personal profile.
Erin Ryan: Oh, strap in, Alyssa. I haven’t even started getting mean. Lindsey Olin Graham was born on July 9, 1955 in Central, South Carolina.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Central like a region?
Erin Ryan: No, the town’s name is Central. It’s a city so exquisite that they named it a word that means being in the middle of something. Lindsey’s mom was named Millie and his dad was named Florence. Now, I know there are more serious things to make fun of about Graham than the fact that he and his Dad both have girl names.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: If Lindsey Graham had actually had a son of his own, he would have named him something like Meredith or Kelly.
Erin Ryan: Graham’s parents owned a bar and pool hall called the Sanitary Cafe, a name that inspires the same kind of confidence as definitely not poisoned baby food. The Graham family lived in what’s been described as a cramped apartment behind the restaurant Bob’s Burgers style, and eventually moved into a mobile home.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Definitely came from humble beginnings.
Erin Ryan: Now, Graham was born into segregated South Carolina, the formerly Confederate state with arguably the most hideous legacy of cruelty and violence toward Black people. When Graham was a kid, his family’s pool hall did not allow Black people to drink there. Still in a memoir, Graham looked back fondly on his time running around in a segregated bar and pool hall as a child, characterizing it as, quote, “great way to grow up.”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: let’s pause and reflect on how half-assed Graham’s 2015 memoir was. He didn’t even really give it a title. He called it My Story, which I guess is slightly better than The Man Called Stinkball, which was his nickname when he was younger because he would take a swig of beer or a puff of a ciggy when a patron at the pool hall went to the bathroom, which is weird for so many reasons. Anyway, My Story was 126 pages long. Which is about as long as the nine-part series of articles Will Saletan wrote 10 years later about what a soulless asshole Graham is. But in this day and age, you gotta have a memoir if you’re running for president, even a half-assed one.
Erin Ryan: NPR interviewed the current occupants of the former site of Graham’s Family Pool Hall in 2015 when Graham was in the process of losing the Republican nomination for president. At the time, it was an Italian restaurant called Villa Toscana, which was so gung-ho about its location’s legacy that it named Graham’s favorite dish after him.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Was it chicken tendies?
Erin Ryan: Close, chicken Parmesan, which is adult chicken tendies. [laughter] If you can believe it, the senator-themed Italian dish wasn’t enough to keep the restaurant afloat, the current tenant of the site of Florence and Millie Graham’s Sanitary Cafe is a Mexican restaurant called The Mexican at Central.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Well, 2012, friends with John McCain willing to work with Democrats on humane immigration reform, Lindsey Graham, would be totally fine with this. 2026, ass-kisser to Donald Trump, Stephen Miller talking point, parroting anti-immigrant zealot, Graham would be in sense that Mexicans were moving into the site of our parents old whites only saloon.
Erin Ryan: In addition to half-assing his memoirs, Lindsey Graham half-assed school. He was a straight C student. Despite this, he became the first person in his family to attend college at the University of South Carolina. There, he joined the Air Force ROTC program.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But then, when Graham was 21, tragedy struck. His mother died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A little over a year later, his dad died of a heart attack, which left Graham’s 13-year-old sister Darlene with nobody to look after her.
Erin Ryan: So Darlene moved in with relatives in a nearby town. Lindsey, who was just starting law school, where he would also get straight Cs, a fact that he seems puzzlingly proud of, would frequently check in on her. But he was not her sole caretaker, nor did he raise her, as some sources claim.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: This confusion might be because Graham was declared Darlene’s legal guardian after their parents died so that she could access Graham’s Air Force benefits.
Erin Ryan: Because C’s get degrees, Graham was able to graduate from law school. After that, he joined the Air Force, not as guy who flies airplanes though, as an Air Force lawyer.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Which is an important job in the military, albeit not a very butch one. He served as an Air Force defense attorney and then was sent to Germany where he switched sides and was the chief Air Force prosecutor in Europe from 1984 to 1988.
Erin Ryan: Apparently he had a great reputation as a litigator. I guess that’s where he first tried out his marble-mouthed but effective, I’m just a simple country lawyer act in Germany.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: In 1988, Graham left active duty and went into private legal practice in South Carolina. He remained a member of the South Carolina Air National Guard and was recalled during George H.W. Bush’s Gulf War in 1990.
Erin Ryan: Now, here’s what Lindsey Graham did during that war. He prepared wills for soldiers that were deploying to the Middle East. What a job.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Yikes.
Erin Ryan: And would make sure that pilots who were about to be sent over there knew the laws of war.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: He filled out paperwork and made sure that soldiers knew the rules. Just hold on to that thought for a bit while we get into the beginnings of Graham’s political career.
Erin Ryan: In 1992, Graham ran for a state House seat and won. After just one term, a 20-year Democratic House member from South Carolina’s third district announced his retirement and Graham ran for the seat. This was back when the Democratic Party still had a stronghold on the American South, which was a relic of the Confederacy. And the seat had not been held by Republicans since 1877.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But 1994 was the year of the so-called Republican Revolution, and when anti-Bill Clinton mania had consumed the minds of many American conservatives. And Graham won in a landslide, thanks in part to an assist from Senator Strom Thurmond.
Erin Ryan: Senator Strom Thurmond was the grandson of a Confederate soldier, an avowed segregationist who was so incensed by the idea of racial equality that he personally filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights Act for more than 24 hours, which was a record that stood for a very long time. We should probably do an entire This F*cking Guy episode on Thurman, but suffice to say he’s that racist senator who after his death at 100 years old, it was revealed that he had fathered a child with a Black teenager.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: And when he was in the Senate, Thurman was widely known to fondle his female colleagues in the elevators, including Senator Patty Murray, who went on the record about what a menace he was.
Erin Ryan: The senator who delivered Strom Thurman’s eulogy by the way, Joseph Robinette Biden. Men are disappointing.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But back to Lindsey. Thanks to the political support of one of the worst human beings in American history, Graham was elected to Congress. He quickly became known for anti-Clinton and pro-military intervention soapboxing.
Erin Ryan: Bill Clinton’s impeachment was the real star maker for Lindsey Graham. Back then, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other House Republicans were just as horny to stick it to Bill Clinton as Bill was to stick to every cute yet curvy woman east of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon line. And this was an opportunity for Republicans to cynically exploit the confusing sexual puritanism of the 1990s in a manner that would, to Republicans at least, paint Clinton’s defenders as opportunistic hypocrites for decades.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: While Graham was the second most junior Republican on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, he was politically precocious, alternately presenting himself as a measured arbiter of morality and the aw-shuck southern uncle ready with a tension-busting joke. In November 1997, he was one of a handful of House Republicans to sign onto a resolution to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Clinton.
Erin Ryan: Mind you, that first resolution did not include any specific charges. Just kind of get him out of there vibes. In 1998, the Clinton haters in the House Judiciary wrestled up four charges of impeachment against the president. Although Graham served as one of the House impeachment managers, he became the only House Republican on the Judiciary to vote against one of four charges.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: He doesn’t have to say, go lie for me to be a crime. You don’t have say, let’s obstruct justice for it to be crime. You judge people on their conduct, not magic phrases.
Erin Ryan: The media was besotted by Graham’s act, his oscillations between thoughtful statesmen and silly goose, with some light flashes of terrifying sadist in there to keep everybody on their toes. One Washington Post write up about the early days of those hearings describes Graham as a man, quote, “whose middle-aged spread and laid-back manner cushioned knife-like intelligence and a sizzling ambition.”.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Knife-like? Intelligence? Laying it on a little thick there, Washington Post.
Erin Ryan: Here’s a longer quote from the piece. “In a world where media exposure often equals power, Graham is claiming star status and a share of influence with his uncanny gift for the camera-ready aphorism. Is this Watergate or Peyton Place, Graham declared at Monday’s historic hearing. Cutting to the heart of the matter and through the clutter of 36 other opening statements as the Judiciary Committee launched its impeachment inquiry. Yesterday’s New York Times, for one, enshrined Graham’s incisive question in a four-column headline in its loopy way. The quip recalls former Tennessee Senator Howard Baker’s much graver challenge during Watergate. What did the president know and when did he know it?”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: In 2002, Lindsey’s haunted mentor, Strom Thurmond, retired from the Senate, a position he’d held for 47 years, and Graham ran for the seat. He won handily and was finally able to join his work husband, John McCain, in the U.S. senate.
Erin Ryan: McCain and Graham’s legendary bromance began in 1998, during the Clinton impeachment hearings. McCain would later recall that he was won over by Graham’s mid-hearing line. “‘You know, where I come from, “‘any man calling a woman at 2 a.m. Is up to no good.'”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Lindsey Graham knows all about the proper way to court a lady.
Erin Ryan: Oh yeah, he could have written his book about that. Senators are so starved of genuine wit that Lindsey Graham is their Fran Lebowitz. So Lindsey helped McCain campaign for president in 2000, and after Graham took his seat in the Senate, he, McCain, and Connecticut’s Joe Lieberman became close friends and formed a nightmare blunt rotation. They bonded over a mutual desire to bomb foreign countries and were called the Three Amigos!
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Now, during these years, Graham superglued himself to John McCain’s butt in a manner we’d later see with President Trump. When the 2008 presidential campaign rolled around, Graham and McCain were joined at the hip. Graham went everywhere with McCain. Graham even spent election night and the following day with McCain at his family’s ranch near Sedona, Arizona. John McCain was everything that Lindsey Graham wishes he had been. Manly, brave at best, pugnacious at worst, a real war hero, which Lindsey Graham was not.
Erin Ryan: Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about Lindsey Graham’s strange military record and the way he liked to talk about it. Like we mentioned before, he was in the Air Force.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: He was a lawyer for the Air force.
Erin Ryan: Right. He was not flying planes or treating the injuries of people who were hurt on the battlefield. He was filing paperwork. But for literal decades after his harrowing time in a Gulf War cubicle, he called himself a Gulf War veteran on his official website. This came to a head in 1998 when his internet bio listed him as a veteran of both Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But the closest Graham got to the Middle East was east over South Carolina, where the McEntire Air National Guard station is located.
Erin Ryan: So in 1998, the Hill contacted several experts to gut check whether it made sense for Graham to claim he was a war veteran. And the experts said, quote, “Graham has no legitimate claim to being called a veteran of the conflict.” He was dinged for the same thing again during his campaign for Senate in 2002, and he was still doing it in 2010, according to a piece by Salon’s Alex Pareene.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: It had worked for him for that long, so why would he change it up?
Erin Ryan: When Graham was running for president in 2015, He referred to himself as battle-tested, and that he’d been serving in the military for his entire adult life. But the Washington Post did a deep dive on what his military service actually entailed, and here’s what they found. Lindsey Graham was given promotions, basically for doing nothing. Between 1994 and 2004, he was promoted twice, even though his personnel files showed that he had, quote, “little to no work.”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Ah, meritocracy at work.
Erin Ryan: The Post investigation found that between January 1995 and January 2005, he got credit for 108 hours of training total.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: It’s a little more than a day a year.
Erin Ryan: But he kept getting promoted, Lieutenant Colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Then in 2004, George W. Bush promoted him to Colonel.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: When the Post reached out to Graham for comment he said quote “I think when it came to being Colonel Graham that they looked at my entire record and I’ll put it up against anybody who’s ever served he said I don’t mean to pat myself on the back but I was one hell of a judge advocate yeah I think I deserve that promotion.”
Erin Ryan: Print it. Air Force norms disagree. Air Reserve officers are unpaid and don’t have a set number of hours that they must meet before qualifying for a pension, but there are norms and Graham didn’t hit the numbers that people who qualify normally hit. Nor did he meet the requirements to complete advanced classes at the Air War College and Air Command and Staff College, but he got promoted anyway.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: He got promoted, anyway.
Erin Ryan: Eventually, Graham did actually deploy overseas, but his deployments were timed to overlap with official trips he was taking there anyway as a senator. And when he was there, he paraded around in his uniform for photo ops with the other service members, like Mickey Mouse rolling into Goofy’s kitchen at Disneyland. One military lawyer who had served in Iraq in the early aughts said that it didn’t seem like Graham did any, quote, “meaningful work.”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Graham also claimed for 10 years that he’d been a senior instructor at the Judge Advocate General School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. But he kind of fudged that too. If we’re being honest in the technical sense, he never taught a single course there. And if we’re very honest, he never even visited the school.
Erin Ryan: [laughs] Wow. I’m a professor at Yale by those rules. When he was asked about this, he said, quote, “he didn’t want to draw attention to his war zone missions.”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But his missions in war zones had doubled as photo opportunities. They were also literally publicized by the DOD.
Erin Ryan: Anyway, because of all of his years of distinguished nothing, Lindsey Graham retired from the Air Force at age 60 and thanks to all his hard work, he’s now entitled to a monthly pension of $2,773.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: That’s enough to cover rent in a sad studio in DC.
Erin Ryan: Your use of the phrase sad studio isn’t far off from how Lindsey Graham actually lives. A 2010 New York Times profile of the senator by Robert Draper claims that Graham’s house is furnished with items that were left by the previous owner. And that he didn’t realize his TV had been stolen for a long time because the TV is in the kitchen. And Lindsey Graham, who let me remind you in 2010, had been an adult man since 1973, does not cook, cannot cook, cannot work a toaster, and possibly can’t work a can opener, and thus barely ever goes into the kitchen, so he didn’t realize his tv had been stolen because he never goes in there. Very cool, Lindsey. His favorite food is Chick-fil-A, by the way, another form of chicken tendies.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Okay, just clock this. I thought when we were talking about a stolen TV, I thought it meant that he had a stolen television in his kitchen, like a hot TV. [laughter] That’s even funnier. Well, despite his refusal to perform the basic functions of an adult, he was adept at talking out of both sides of his greasy mouth. During the Obama administration, then White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel noted that Graham was known to head to the White to suck up on the days he wasn’t publicly trash-talking the president. We should have been checking his pockets for the White House M&Ms.
Erin Ryan: White House M&M, are they like special M&Ms?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Yeah, they’re special M&Ms and people love to take the White House M&M’s and I bet he was leaving with pockets full.
Erin Ryan: Oh, I’m sure. During the Obama years, Graham’s self-styled legacy of working across the aisle metastasized into a Hall of Fame level legacy of flip-flopping. If he were a Talking Heads song, Lindsey Graham would be Make Flippy Floppy.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: If Lindsey Graham were a PG rated 90s adventure comedy, he’d be Flipper.
Erin Ryan: If he were an HGTV show, he’d flipping virgins.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: no comment. If Lindsey Graham were a comedian, he’d be Flip Wilson.
Erin Ryan: Nice. Now we could go on all day. Suffice to say, Lindsey Graham is a fake ass bitch. Let’s go through some examples, shall we?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Well, in February 2009, I remember like it was yesterday and yesterday sucked. Graham called the Obama administration’s post-financial crash American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, what most of us today call the stimulus for short, an orgy of congressional spending unrelated to creating a job. He voted against it, natch.
Erin Ryan: But then in 2010, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, Alyssa.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Please go on.
Erin Ryan: He gladly accepted funds from the bill funneled to South Carolina. You know, the funds he voted against receiving.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Yep. Even in 2014, after six years of being a stop and start, pain in the ass to the Obama White House, Graham was still pissing off people on the right. A 2014 Molly Ball profile of Graham in the Atlantic recalls that he’d been censured by county GOP organizations in his own state nine separate times. And that one South Carolina weirdo was known to drive around with a model of Graham stuffed head first into a toilet. The far right group, Club for Growth, had him at the top of their target list in 2011.
Erin Ryan: In June 2015, despite the fact that he’d pissed off people at all points on the political spectrum, Graham announced that he was seeking the Republican nomination for president. Many people forgot about this because he’s a deeply unappealing national politician and it faded out of the contest like a dud firework by December of that year when he was polling nationally at a whopping 0.5% average according to Real Clear Politics.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But his policy positions during his campaign are worth noting, if only to establish how unashamed he is of a stunning record of hypocrisy. In 2015, Graham ran for president as an anti-Trump conservative. In fact, not liking Donald Trump was pretty much his whole personality between 2015 and 2016.
Erin Ryan: Trump didn’t get off on a good foot with Graham when he insulted John McCain by saying, I remember this, by saying that he prefers soldiers who weren’t captured. Now recall, John McCain was captured and held prisoner in Vietnam. His North Vietnamese captors offered to release him when they found out that his dad was an admiral, but McCain refused and stayed with his fellow detainees instead. They remained prisoners of war for five years. McCain suffered permanent physical damage from his ordeal.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Right, so that comment didn’t sit well with the block of the general public who aren’t complete degenerates. And Lindsey Graham didn’t like it either. He called Trump a kook and a jackass. From there, Graham didn’t hold back what he thought about Trump. In a 2015 CNN interview, Graham said, there’s only one way to make America great again. Tell Donald Trump to go to hell. A different CNN interview same year, he called Trump, a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He said he was disgusted by the former Apprentice host. And check out this Daily Show interview.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: That’s like being shot or poisoned, what does it really matter? [applause]
[clip of Trevor Noah]: Lindsey Graham, I don’t understand. I don’t understand. If it is like being, okay, first of all, who is shooting and who’s poisoning between Trump and Cruz?
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: Well, Donald is like being shot in the head.
[clip of Trevor Noah]: Okay.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: You might find an antidote to poisoning. I don’t know, but maybe there’s time.
Erin Ryan: Who knew? After he dropped out of the race due to his lack of appeal, Graham said, We can lose an election, but I don’t want us to lose our heart and soul. If we nominate Donald Trump, we will get destroyed. Later on Twitter, he’d expand on that quote and say that if the party were to nominate Trump and get destroyed, they would deserve it.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Graham predicted on Fox News that the GOP would get slaughtered in the general election if they nominated Trump.
Erin Ryan: There has never been a moment of his adult life that Lindsey Graham hasn’t been absolutely bubbling over with booze and bullshit. Even all his anti-Trump rhetoric can be attributed to his loyalty to John McCain, not to any principals.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Lindsey Graham can be both a devoted friend and a partisan hack.
Erin Ryan: I’m not sure about the friendship part. See, I believe that Graham’s loyalty to McCain wasn’t just about friendship. Remember he and McCain were forever joined by the soul over their mutual desire to bomb Iran. I think that the most important thing to Lindsey Graham is how much he loves war and being in close proximity as possible to anybody who can help him make his war fantasies come true.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Possible. When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, Graham dutifully followed Mitch McConnell’s made-up rule that it would be improper to confirm a new Supreme Court Justice during an election year. Together, he and the other Senate Republicans joined in blocking the confirmation of Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.
Erin Ryan: Who I think we can agree now given the benefit of hindsight that comes with his tenure as AG probably would have sucked a little bit, but not as badly as the guy who eventually got the seat, Neil Gorsuch.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Sure, Garland’s nomination is a great example of why you don’t compromise with your imagination before you come to the table.
Erin Ryan: Meanwhile, the second Trump was elected, Graham tried to walk the awkward tightrope of cozying up to the president while maintaining a bosom friendship with the guy who was the president’s enemy. A real love-hate triangle. For anybody who watched former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s theatrics in her congressional hearings and thought that her performance was too nuanced and subtle, you’d have loved Graham’s turn toward Trumpism. I personally love this clip of Bondi and Graham interacting while overacting during a 2025 appearance by Bondi before a Senate committee.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: You can’t, can you?
[clip of Pam Bondi]: I can’t, Senator, and I can—
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: Can you tell me why my phone records, when I’m the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, were sought by the Jack Smith agents? Why did they ask to know who I called and what I was doing from January 4th to the 7th? Can you tell me that?
[clip of Pam Bondi]: No senator and there were eight senators in total.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: Do you think that was an abuse of power?
[clip of Pam Bondi]: Senator, I cannot discuss whether there is or is not an ongoing investigation. If I may add one thing, they also wasted $50 million on what you just described, trying to put President Trump in jail prior to the election.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Somebody give both of them Razzies.
Erin Ryan: By early 2017, Graham was publicly praising Trump’s hawk-heavy national security team. And by the end of the year, was getting invited on golf outings with the president. It’s always been a little weird to me, Alyssa, that Trump loves golf so much. And golf is like a sport that’s a thinly veiled excuse for men to day drink with their bros. And Trump doesn’t drink. Maybe he just loves being around alcoholics.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: And golf carts. And we know Lindsey Graham loves his liquor.
Erin Ryan: Yeah. Upon information and belief, in my opinion, I think Lindsey Graham, son of a bar owner, has a pretty serious drinking problem. But because he’s Mr. Rogers’ Wario, people kinda downplay Lindsey Graham showing up slurring to interviews and events like a charming old Southern fop. But Graham’s drinking is bad. It’s so bad that in his book, another fucking book, Louisiana Senator John Kennedy remarked that spending time with Graham could lead to, quote, “intelligent conversation or vomit in the fish tank.”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Graham’s drink of choice, by the way, according to a 2010 profile, sweetish alcoholic beverages like Bailey’s liqueur and almond schnapps. Now, having barfed anisette myself, I personally can’t imagine anything more disgusting, except of course, barfing it into a fish tank. How does that even get clean? Justice for those fish, Erin.
Erin Ryan: In 2015, Graham appeared on the incredibly cringy Politics on Tap pre-debate show alongside CNN’s Dana Bash, where the senator’s obvious drinking problem was played for laughs.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Keep in mind, this was during a time that Graham wasn’t polling well enough to even be in a debate with the GOP frontrunners.
Erin Ryan: Yeah, and during one of those kids’ table debates, Graham proclaimed that one of the first things he’d do if he were elected president was make sure that people in Washington drank more. [laughter] Imagine being somebody who spent any time in DC at all and thought, what this place needs is more alcohol. But don’t take our word for it. Judge for yourself.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: I want sanctuary city policy to end. What we’re going to do is, well, I’m not going to agree, that would grind it to a halt. But when the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled four to three, that they didn’t violate the Supreme, the Constitution of Wisconsin, I agree with the three, but I accept the four.
[clip of reporter]: Is there a foreign war you don’t support?
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: I support wars that make America safe. You know what? Because I’m pro-life doesn’t mean I won’t kill you. I’m opening a tissue, chairman—
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Just because I’m pro life doesn’t mean I won’t kill you.
Erin Ryan: Kill me with the scent of your amaretto vomit. [laughter]
[AD BREAK]
Erin Ryan: Now, as he was sucking up to the man he once claimed would destroy the Republican party, another seminal moment happened in Lindsey Graham’s life. John McCain, the man with whom Graham would claim he had a political marriage, passed away in 2018, leaving Graham a political widow.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: McCain’s former deputy campaign manager has said of Graham, he’s always needed a North star. And until John McCain died, it was John McCain. I’ve always gotten the sense, having worked for Senator McCain, that after Senator McCain died Graham was searching for who the next star was he was going to hitch his wagon to. And it’s been Trump.
Erin Ryan: Conservative men or natural followers. John McCain had banned Donald Trump from his funeral for totally understandable reasons because John McCain hated Trump’s guts and is petty.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: It’s a level of petty I can respect a funeral ban list.
Erin Ryan: Okay, but Lindsey Graham went ahead and invited Ivanka Trump to McCain’s funeral. Now, why do this at all? I feel like funeral ban lists are pretty non-negotiable and they should also apply to the banned person’s kids that you don’t know that well. And a guy’s funeral is kind of a gross place to attempt to network, but it’s clear that even before McCain was in the ground, grieving Graham already had his sights set on getting into his second political marriage, this time with President Trump.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: A few months after McCain’s death, Graham was mum when Trump insulted his former best friend on social media. He accused people asking him about the comments of being out to hurt Donald Trump. Graham’s disintegration into MAGA was on display in how he talked about FBI special counsel Robert Mueller. Remember the Mueller investigation? Remember how people had those little shirts that said it’s Mueller time? And everyone thought that eventually this stern FBI agent would be able to nail down the slime mold that is Donald Trump. That was cute.
Erin Ryan: That was cute. 2018 was cute! Well, in 2018, just months before McCain’s death, Graham was on the record claiming that he’d make sure Mueller would be able to continue his investigation into whether the Trump administration had colluded with Russia to aid Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election. Graham said, quote, “It’s not about Mr. Mueller. It’s about Trump. It’s the rule of law. It’s a system for today, tomorrow, and forever that makes sure that nobody, even the president, is above scrutiny.” Sidebar, years later, when the Supreme Court ruled that the president is actually kind of above scrutiny [laughter] in a case regarding President Trump’s role in the January 6th insurrection, Graham would call it, quote, “a good day for President Trump and a good for America.” But then when Donald Trump used some of his presidential powers to mass pardon everybody facing charges stemming from the January 6th riot in 2025, Graham was like, no, no no, not like that. He said, quote, “When you pardon people who attack police officers, you’re sending the wrong signal to the public at large, and it’s not what you want to do to protect cops, but he has that power.”
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Lindsey uses so many words to say both nothing and everything all at once. Back to 2018, after McCain’s death, he started questioning the legitimacy of the investigation. He was once again trying to espouse two opposing viewpoints. Institutions are good, and the process he set out by the Constitution should continue unabated as they were designed, but also maybe the investigation should not be happening. Law enforcement has the right to investigate, but they shouldn’t be acting according to that right.
Erin Ryan: It’s so slimy. It’s such like politician doublespeak. The apotheosis of Graham’s post-McCain pro-Trump theatrics happened in September 2018 during the confirmation hearing for Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, red-faced beer enthusiast Brett Kavanaugh. Now, Kavanagh had been accused of being a sex pest by multiple women, and as Democrats were calling for the accusations to be thoroughly investigated before they carried on with the business of handing him a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the country, The White House was interfering behind the scenes to make sure that the accusations weren’t even being looked into. And Graham was drama-maxing.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us. What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020. You’ve said that, not me. This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics. And if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you’ve done to this guy. Would you say you’ve been through hell?
[clip of Brett Kavanaugh]: I’ve been though hell and then some.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: This is not a job interview.
[clip of Brett Kavanaugh]: Yeah.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: This is hell. This is going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward because of this crap.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: I feel like Brett Kavanaugh’s doing all right.
Erin Ryan: I’ve got two words for you Lindsey. Blotting papers.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Yeah, truly. For years, the rumor around D.C. Was that Lindsey Graham wanted a Supreme Court appointment. Maybe his Kavanaugh crash out was partly him channeling him feeling sorry for himself. Maybe it just had set in that he was now too old to ever get the job this other drunk was about to be handed.
Erin Ryan: Whenever Graham is asked about his Trump 180, he presents it like something that’s not only logical, but something that he’s doing for the good of the country. In 2019, he told the New York Times, quote, “‘I’ve got an opportunity up here working with the president to get some really good outcomes for the country.’ I’ve never been called this much by a president in my life. He’s asked me to do some things, and I’ve asked him to do somethings in return.'” That’s not ominous. [laughter]
Alyssa Mastromonaco: In a few years, we’d see exactly what Graham meant by really good outcomes. Hint, it involves tens of thousands of dead children.
Erin Ryan: The Bulwark’s Will Saletan, like we mentioned, wrote a nine-part series called The Corruption of Lindsey Graham that is almost as long as Graham’s memoir, like we said. The series chronicles the way that Lindsey Graham went from never Trump, pro-institutional Republican to tread-on-me-daddy Trump, institutions, sminstitutions, toady. There’s also a podcast version. The series is definitely worth a read or listen if you really want to get granular with all the ways that Graham is a spineless hypocrite.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: But our time here is running out, and while we’re gonna touch on the myriad ways that Graham is a duplicitous snake, for now, let’s address the 800 pound Grindr profile in the room, the mystery of Lindsey Graham’s sexuality.
Erin Ryan: Lindsey Graham is a confirmed bachelor, which in the parlance of 30 years ago was eyebrow waggling code for fruity guy. That 2010 Robert Draper New York Times profile we mentioned earlier is one of the first mainstream outlets to ask Graham about his sexuality point blank. That’s because that year, critics on Graham’s right had speculated that Graham was gay and that Democrats were blackmailing him with that information in order to get him to join them in supporting immigration reform. Now, was this an op to distract the fact that it’s actually been Israel that’s been blackmailing Lindsey Graham all along?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: For legal reasons, that was a joke.
Erin Ryan: So, Draper asks Graham about the gay rumors, and Graham in his typical fashion quipped, Like, maybe I’m having a clandestine affair with Ricky Martin? I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men. I’m sure hundreds of them are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. But I ain’t available. I ain’t gay. Sorry.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Oh, Lindsey.
Erin Ryan: Now, before you come at us with pitchforks, Robert Draper was not calling Lindsey Graham gay. We are not calling Lindsey Graham gay.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: No, we’re not. But these other people are.
Erin Ryan: Laura Loomer, in that sworn deposition wherein she also claimed that Marjorie Taylor Green has Arby’s roast beef sandwiches in her pants, claimed that it is well known that Lindsey Graham is gay, then she tweeted about it saying she was under oath so she had to tell the truth.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Hmm. For a wild swing in the other direction, legend of stage and screen, Patti LuPone once tweeted, Lindsey Graham, you are a disgrace. On a personal note, why don’t you just bite the bullet and come out? You might just come to your senses.
Erin Ryan: All these other people people also seem to think Lindsey Graham is gay.
[various voices]: Hey Lindsey, why don’t you just admit that you’re gay and then people won’t blackmail you anymore? / He likes to lay on the floor and I pour syrup on top of him and he goes, I’m a little flapjack, I’m a little flapjack. / You know Lindsey Graham probably bought most of them. / No, no, no. Lindsey Graham bought all the knee pads for Donald Trump. / I’m not saying he’s a homo. I’m just saying that staying in the closet for 69 years cannot be easy. He’s never been married. He’s ever been seen in a romantic situation with a woman and he kisses up to Trump real hard. Again, you do the math.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Wow a little flapjack.
Erin Ryan: Oh my god, that’s a parody, obviously. But I’m a little flap-jack.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Is funny.
Erin Ryan: I wanna just start saying that.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: I am a little flapjack. [laughter]
Erin Ryan: After a string of anti-gay moves, including voting against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and co-sponsoring the Defense of Marriage Act, as well as confirming Heritage Foundation endorsed judges to the Supreme Court, collective hostility came to a head. In early June 2020, adult film actor Sean Harding tweeted that Graham was a well-known client of male escorts in the DC area who nicknamed him Lady G. Harding also alleged that this information wasn’t widely known because Graham had the sex workers he hired sign NDAs.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Of course. Something this juicy aimed at someone who was that annoying to that many people went viral immediately. Confirmation bias and all that. But Lady G and Lady Graham were trending topics for days.
Erin Ryan: From there, LGBTQ-aimed publications like The Body and The Los Angeles Blade picked up the story. Now, as giddy as the rumor of Lindsey Graham frequenting male prostitutes makes Graham haters like us, no reputable news source was able to verify Harding’s claims. If anybody can, please email us at Hysteria@crooked.com. Please do not send pictures. We urge you to direct those to TMZ instead. Graham didn’t do anything to beat the lavender allegations when, during a 2026 government shutdown where TSA workers weren’t paid for months, the unmarried, childless 70-year-old man fucked off to Walt Disney World and was photographed standing alone, holding the gayest bubble wand currently for sale at the parks. TMZ published the photo and people went bananas.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Lindsey’s magic kingdom jaunt made just about everybody mad. Nobody thought that was cool or good. This is a topic on which we agree with Alex Jones.
[clip of Alex Jones]: Lindsey Graham is walking around by himself with a baby blue and pink princess scepter. And he’s walking around talking to Mickey Mouse and people looking completely insane. Look at him on TV. [laughter] He constantly talks about killing people. And then he goes, can’t make the John Wayne Gacy face he makes. You know what it is. He’ll just go, I can’t even do it a second Brian Stelter facial just like he really turns into a demon on television now. He’s running around with the princess scepter.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: How many times can he say scepter?
Erin Ryan: I don’t know, but I like it. I like the way that Alex Jones says scepter. How wonderful is it to see Americans agree on something. And that thing is thinking that Lindsey Graham is a jackass. That’s why he’s the people’s princess. Later TMZ caught up with him and asked about Bubblegate. And the senator had nothing to say in his own defense.
[clip of reporter]: Hi Lindsey Graham. How are you mate? I’m from TMZ. Could I just ask you about the bubble wand sir? Can I just ask you quickly about the bubble wand?
Erin Ryan: I am so glad that TMZ is in Washington D.C.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: It is the greatest thing that’s happened to D.C. since Rosa Mexicano in the late 90s. Before we move to Graham’s disturbing horniness for war, we should talk a bit about his hypocrisy around impeachment.
Erin Ryan: Right, early in Graham’s political career, he played a bit of a constitutional twister in trying to justify the reasons that President Bill Clinton should be impeached for moral failings that don’t obviously violate the law. But both times Trump was impeached, Graham was apoplectic about what a miscarriage of justice this was. Here he is rending his ill-fitting suit over Trump’s first impeachment.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: If you think you’ve done the country a good service by legitimizing this impeachment process, what you have done is unleashed the partisan forces of hell. This is sour grapes. They impeached the President of the United States in 78 days. You could not get a parking ticket if you contested it in 78 day. They gave out souvenir pins when it was over. If you can’t see through that, your hatred of Donald Trump has blinded you to the obvious. This is not about protecting the country. This is about destroying the president.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: The events that would precede his second impeachment would cause Graham to flip-flop like a fish in a rowboat. After Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Graham urged Trump to not concede. He even made some calls to state officials on behalf of the president, including a call to Georgia officials where he asked them to throw out more legally cast mail-in ballots with signature irregularities.
Erin Ryan: Just a little light voter suppression as a treat.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Just a sprinkle.
Erin Ryan: Just a lil’ sprinkle of it. In 2021, the New York Times would report that while Graham was doing all this legwork for Trump’s election lie, he’d also reached out to Joe Biden in an attempt to rekindle that friendship conveniently just in time for Biden to assume the presidency. During that olive branch call, Graham said that he’d only called for an investigation into Biden’s son Hunter so that Trump would be happy.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Hmm. I hope Biden had that call-on speakerphone for all to hear. Truly, what on earth? What a two-faced glassy-eyed boozehound bitch.
Erin Ryan: After publicly stoking doubt in the integrity of the election, Graham was shocked, shocked when a Trump-inspired mob stormed the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Graham’s workplace, while he was inside, in an attempt to overturn the election results.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Graham only likes violence when it’s happening to other people. On January 6th, a visibly shaken Graham appeared to have a dramatic public breakup with Trump on the floor of the senate.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: Trump and I we’ve had a hell of a journey. I hate it being this way. 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.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Girl, we’ve all been there.
Erin Ryan: And you say visibly shaken, Alyssa, but to me he seems a little bit shaken like a martini is shaken. If you catch my drift.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: However, mere weeks later, Graham would double back on that breakup doing the political equivalent of standing outside of Mar-a-Lago blasting Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes from a boombox.
Erin Ryan: Then he voted against creating the January 6th commission. Now if they’d impeached and removed Trump from office during either of his impeachments, he would have been banned for running for office forever.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: If only.
Erin Ryan: But if Trump had been banned from running for office forever, Graham’s most treasured dream may never have come true. You see, all of Graham’s good-natured, boozy antics, southern sissy affect, and folksy one-liners obscure something truly sinister. The man is enamored with violence and human suffering in a way that seems a little psychotic. Just check out these remarks made to the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit in late 2025 in support of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: I feel good about the Republican Party. We’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes.
Erin Ryan: More than 50,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza, by the way, according to UNICEF. In Senator John Kennedy’s book, the same book that joked around about Graham puking into a fish tank, Kennedy quips, if you want to stump Lindsey, just ask him to name a country he wouldn’t bomb.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: One of the only times Graham has sharply rebuked Trump since attaching himself to the president like a barnacle was when Trump pulled troops out of Northern Syria in 2019. In an interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan, Graham said that Trump was putting the nation at risk with the troop drawdown and that, quote—
Erin Ryan: If I hear the president say one more time, I made a campaign promise to get out of Syria, I’m gonna throw up.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: So dramatic. There’s some sourcing that indicates that Graham has made Trump more hawkish. Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh recently said of Graham, We’re talking about a guy who, if he could, would have American troops everywhere on the planet engaged in some sort of war. He’s a war-hungry dude and he’s got Trump’s ear.
Erin Ryan: Like we mentioned earlier, throughout all of his flippy-flapping, Lindsey Graham has been consistent in his belief that Iran should be turned into a field of glass.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: He was a staunch opponent of 2015’s Iran nuclear deal, the deal that the Obama administration made and Trump shredded in his first term.
Erin Ryan: Oh, the deal that’s better than any possible outcome of the dumb war we’re in right now. That deal?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: That’s the one. Graham has been insisting for decades that Iran is on the cusp of having the ability to destroy the world. And if the US doesn’t do something soon, they’ll do it.
Erin Ryan: But I mean, isn’t the proof in the pudding? Like Netanyahu, Graham’s chicken little claims can be easily disproven by time. However, he’s not chastened by being one of the wrongest bitches in the foreign policy game. In a recent appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s podcast, Graham called the Iranian government, quote, “The Nazis of the Middle East.” Graham is taking credit for convincing Donald Trump to buy Benjamin Netanyahu’s magic beans and use billions of American tax dollars to blow shit up in Iran, a country that posed no immediate threat to us. Maybe that’s why he seemed like he’s been in a goon cave of blood lust since the war started.
[clip of Lindsey Graham]: We literally dodged a nuclear bullet. If President Trump had not done this, to all those who don’t believe that, you’re stupid. When this regime goes down, we’re gonna have a new Mideast. We’re gonna blow the hell out of these people. We live in a world of great danger. And in Donald J. Trump, you have a common sense reason man. Unleash the American military with Israel on Hezbollah tonight finish these bastards off Mr. President do it and do it now they’re weak. I will be with Israel to our dying day. My Senate job is more than just figuring out who to bomb next that’s not bad when the night falls the bombs drops. To the world if you don’t understand this is a threat to Israel [overlapping voices] just flatten it we flattened Berlin we flatten Tokyo. So, to any ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you try to help the ICC. We’re going to sanction you. We should crush your economy. Our friends in Israel, finish the job. Do what you have to do to bring about the regime change that will allow your children sleep through the night. Cuba is a communist dictatorship that’s killed priests and nuns. They’ve preyed on their own people. Their days are numbered. God bless Israel. We should move all our stuff to Israel. Thank you.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: That’s deranged.
Erin Ryan: He is deranged, Alyssa, I’m telling you, he’s like—
Alyssa Mastromonaco: No, I know he is, but it’s like, you just, he is like frothing, he like rabid, it’s so gross.
Erin Ryan: Something funny haha about a southern alcoholic with weird secret sexuality who puffed up his military record to make himself sound like more of a warrior and less of a wuss. For what it’s worth, he’s still up to his old tricks. Check out this clip of former New Jersey governor Chris Christie on a recent episode of Bill Maher.
[clip of reporter]: I want to know what do Republicans say to each other when we’re not listening about what’s happening in America right now.
[clip of Chris Christie]: Look, so many of my fellow party members, especially come up to me, because I say all this stuff out loud, and they in the green room at ABC, they say, you’re so brave, that’s so great. I totally agree with you. He’s nuts. And then they go out on camera to be interviewed there like he’s the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln, you know, and then they come back in the green room and they say to me you know I have to do that but like I don’t really mean it. That’s what they say.
[clip of Bill Maher]: Like who specifically? [applause]
[clip of Chris Christie]: All right Bill, one more time so I’m going to give you all the names but I’ll give you one, Lindsey Graham.
Erin Ryan: A duplicitous, sadistic goblin right to his core. But watch this space, guys. Even though Graham has coasted to victory in most every election he’s ever run in, he’s facing something less than a slam dunk this year. He’s up for reelection. He’s been challenged in the primary from the right. And he’s not currently polling high enough to avoid a runoff. Some polls put he and a Democratic general election opponent within the margin of error. And the discourse is not breaking in Graham’s direction. He’s increasingly the target of ire from a loud and growing faction of right-wing media, including Tucker Carlson, who has called Graham out for his warmongering and, quote, “Strange psychosexual connection to violence.” Wow, on that, Tucker and I agree. At the end of all this, Graham might end up with nothing, which is more than he deserves. So there you have it, Alyssa. Lindsey Graham. Where do we think he lies on our matrix of fucking guys?
Alyssa Mastromonaco: So, gonna go with scheming sociopath and opportunist.
Erin Ryan: Yeah. I think scheming sociopath for sure. I think he’s an opportunist about almost everything, except about like wanting to kill people in a war. Like he is—
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Right like he makes his alliances opportunistically to get to that end goal.
Erin Ryan: Yes, absolutely. Like, he’s willing to get in bed with pretty much anybody, as long as it gets him to bombs. And now he is really, he is really living his best little princess life. I think I hate him more than almost, like, just as a human being, I think, I hate more than any of the other ones we’ve done.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Really?
Erin Ryan: Yeah, like if I had to go on a road trip, and I had to pick one of the fucking guys to go with.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: Yeah.
Erin Ryan: I don’t wanna be on a road trip with a guy that smells like almond schnapps or whatever, like, ugh.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: No, but he might pass out.
Erin Ryan: He might pass, but also, you’ve seen the look that he gets on his face when he’s angry or he’s talking about the war. It’s like this mask slips down.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: It’s true.
Erin Ryan: And he has the look of somebody who is like strangling someone to death.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: I mean, it’s no it’s it’s pathological. That about wraps up the time we have for this episode of This F*cking Guy If you like what you’ve seen hit the like button share with your friends and leave us a comment if you’ve got an idea for a future fucking guy subject. We’re trying to get to 750,000 YouTube subscribers. So if you haven’t already subscribed, please do and if you’re listening to this, please leave the show a five-star rating. It will help other people find us.
Erin Ryan: This episode was written and co-researched by me with a writing assist from Alyssa Mastromonaco. All the rest of our credits, as well as links to our sources, like Will Saletan’s work at the Bulwark and Robert Draper’s profile from the New York Times, can be found in our show notes. Trust me, guys, the bibliography is always a fun read. Take care, be well. If you’re excited by the idea of 165 people, mostly little girls, being killed in military action, then maybe you should jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.
Alyssa Mastromonaco: And fuck that guy.
Erin Ryan: Fuck that guy.
