Tuesday, March 31, 2026
The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree
The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree
“The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
The Constitution grants sweeping pardon powers to the president, which means that public opinion has historically been the only check on that power. The risk of a backlash is the reason that presidents have waited until their last days in office to issue many pardons and commutations, especially dubious ones to family members (like Hunter Biden) or political allies (like Caspar W. Weinberger, whom George H.W. Bush pardoned). The potential for a backlash also made presidents cautious about the number of pardons they issued. They understood that there could be an outcry if somebody who received a pardon later committed a new crime. The pardon system has also relied on the decency of American presidents.
President Trump has abandoned this approach. His self-serving pardons are so numerous that public attention cannot keep up with them. It is a version of the strategy that his former adviser Steve Bannon has described as “flood the zone”: Do so much so fast that people cannot follow the consequences.
He has created a veritable pardon industry, in which people with White House connections accept payments from wealthy convicts. Among those on whom he has bestowed freedom are dozens of people convicted of fraud. He has also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras, who helped traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, and Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence for running Silk Road, a sprawling criminal enterprise that sold drugs. There seems to be no crime too ugly for a Trump pardon.
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Worst of all, Mr. Trump granted clemency on the first day of his second term to everyone who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He did not distinguish between rioters who were relatively peaceful and those who attacked police officers, as Vice President JD Vance said should be the case. About 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters received a clean slate, regardless of their actions.
The results have been disastrous. At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack. The outcome was predictable. Critics, including this board, had warned that Mr. Trump’s pardons would embolden the rioters by signaling that crime has no consequences. One does not have to be a criminologist to predict that people who commit a violent act and are absolved of any punishment might become repeat offenders.
The American public deserves to understand the mayhem that the Jan. 6 pardons have unleashed. Among the 12 serious recidivists whom we are aware of, four were in jail or prison at the time of the pardon, and they quickly went on to commit more crimes:
On March 5, a court in Florida sentenced Andrew Paul Johnson to life in prison for molesting a 12-year-old boy and a girl of the same age. To keep the children quiet, Mr. Johnson is said to have promised to bequeath to them part of a Jan. 6 restitution payment from the federal government that he claimed he would receive. He used the online gaming platforms Discord and Roblox to reach out to the children after Mr. Trump freed him from prison. On Jan. 6, Mr. Johnson entered the Capitol through a broken window and accosted police officers.
In the past two months, Jake Lang destroyed an ice sculpture outside the Minnesota State Capitol, leading to a felony vandalism charge, and helped organize an anti-Muslim rally in New York City that turned violent. On Jan. 6, he was caught on camera storming the Capitol with a baseball bat and a riot shield, which prosecutors said he used to attack police officers.
In May, Zachary Alam was arrested for breaking into a house in Virginia and stealing a tablet computer and a diamond necklace. On Jan. 6, he was among the first to enter the Capitol building from its west lawn and hurled items at police officers from a balcony. At his sentencing hearing, he was unrepentant: “Sometimes you have to break the rules to do what’s right.” He had previous convictions for auto theft and driving under the influence.
Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys, scuffled with protesters at a news conference and was briefly detained on assault charges, a month after Mr. Trump freed him from a 22-year prison sentence. Mr. Tarrio was one of the leaders behind the Jan. 6 attack, but he was not in Washington on the day of the riot. He had been kicked out of the city after vandalizing a Black church after an earlier pro-Trump rally.
An additional eight Jan. 6 rioters were out of prison when Mr. Trump pardoned them and have since been charged with new crimes:
On March 25, a judge sentenced Daniel Tocci to four years in prison for possession of more than 110,000 child pornography images. During the Jan. 6 riot, he joined the mob as it broke into the Capitol and destroyed and took government property.
On March 1, Bryan Betancur grabbed a woman’s hair on the Washington Metro, leading to a charge of assault and battery. At least two women have also accused him of stalking. He was already on probation for a burglary conviction when he stormed the Capitol and helped rioters circulate furniture that most likely was used as weapons.
In October, Christopher Moynihan threatened to kill Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, and pleaded guilty to a harassment charge over the incident. On Jan. 6, he was among the first rioters to breach police barricades and eventually broke into the Senate chamber.
Robert Packer was arrested in September after his dogs attacked people, putting four in the hospital. He previously had a long criminal record that included theft and drunken driving, and during the Jan. 6 riot, he wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt.
John Andries violated a legal order requested by the mother of his child by repeatedly following and confronting her, leading to a sentence in June of 60 days in jail and three years of unsupervised probation. On Jan. 6, he entered the Capitol through a broken window and pushed police officers once inside.
Brent Holdridge was arrested in May for stealing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of industrial copper wire. On Jan. 6, he was scheduled to be in jail on separate drug-related charges, but he skipped his booking and joined the mob as it breached the Capitol.
Jonathan Munafo was rearrested last year after he allegedly fled federal supervision imposed for dozens of menacing phone calls, including one in which he threatened to “cut the throat” of a 911 dispatcher. During the riots, he punched a police officer twice, stole his riot shield and used a wooden flagpole to try to break a window.
Days after he was pardoned, Matthew Huttle is said to have resisted arrest during a traffic stop, and a sheriff’s deputy shot and killed him. The police said he had a gun. On Jan. 6, he helped take over the Capitol and joined rioters in chanting, “Whose house? Our house.”
This list does not include at least 27 rioters who committed other crimes before they received their pardons. That group includes one woman who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing someone while driving drunk and a man who livestreamed a bomb threat while driving around Barack Obama’s neighborhood in Washington.
How can the nation hold Mr. Trump accountable for the lawlessness that he has made possible? The only answer is public opinion and its most tangible manifestation: election results.
In this year’s midterms, he and the Republican Party he leads deserve to pay a political price for the pardons. Mr. Trump continues to lionize a violent attack on Congress carried out in his name — an attack that included threats to kill the vice president of the United States and physical assaults against police officers guarding the Capitol. In the aftermath of the attacks, one officer suffered a series of strokes and died, and four other officers died by suicide.
Yet Mr. Trump still supports the rioters and lies about what happened that day. Congressional Republicans, for the most part, back him up. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said, referring to the blanket pardon, “I stand with him on it.” Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio has complained about the unpleasant nature of life in prison for the rioters before the pardons. Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado said she wanted to give the rioters a guided tour of the Capitol. Other Republicans, including the Senate majority leader, John Thune, have avoided answering questions about the pardons and said they involve “looking backward.”
The violence that the pardoned rioters continue to commit puts the lie to that weak excuse. The Jan. 6 pardons undermined the law, and they undermined public order. They were an affront to police officers everywhere. Mr. Trump has a constitutional right to pardon whom he chooses. The rest of us have a right to hold him and his enablers responsible for their actions.
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.“
Lawrence: Even some Trump voters joined the ‘No Kings’ protests
Yes, there were significant and organized protests against President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Policy, which eventually led to the Trail of Tears. While Jackson framed the policy as a "humanitarian" necessity, it was met with fierce opposition from a diverse coalition of politicians, religious groups, and activists.
Political Opposition
Within the federal government, the opposition was led by the National Republican Party (which later became the Whigs). Key figures argued that removal was a stain on national honor and a violation of existing treaties.
* Henry Clay and Daniel Webster: Two of the most prominent orators of the era, they argued that the federal government had a legal and moral obligation to uphold treaties made with the Cherokee and other nations.
* Edward Everett: A Massachusetts Congressman, he delivered a famous speech in 1830 warning that the forced removal would be remembered as a "darker and more disgraceful" chapter in American history.
* Davy Crockett: Perhaps the most famous dissenter, the Tennessee Congressman broke with Jackson (a fellow Tennessean) over the Indian Removal Act of 1830. He famously stated that his conscience would not allow him to vote for a bill that "wickedly stripped" people of their rights, a move that contributed to his eventual political defeat.
The Religious and Reform Movement
The anti-removal movement was one of the first major "human rights" crusades in the United States, often compared to the early abolitionist movement.
* Jeremiah Evarts: A Christian missionary and activist, he wrote a series of influential essays under the pseudonym "William Penn." He argued that the Cherokee were a sovereign nation and that the U.S. was legally bound to protect their land rights.
* Petitions and Rallies: Women’s groups played a massive role, organizing some of the first large-scale petition drives in U.S. history. Thousands of signatures were sent to Congress, particularly from the Northeast, demanding that Jackson respect tribal sovereignty.
Legal Resistance
The Cherokee Nation themselves launched a sophisticated legal protest that reached the Supreme Court. In the landmark case Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Cherokee Nation was a distinct community in which the laws of Georgia had no force.
Jackson’s response to this legal protest is famously (though perhaps apocryphally) summarized as: "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."
Why the Protests Failed
Despite the intensity of the dissent, several factors ensured the policy moved forward:
* Southern Interests: Land speculators and white settlers in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were desperate for cotton land and exerted immense pressure on Jackson.
* The 1830 Vote: The Indian Removal Act passed by a very narrow margin in the House (102 to 97), showing just how divided the country actually was.
* Executive Defiance: Jackson used the power of the presidency to ignore the Supreme Court and bypass Congressional critics, prioritizing Western expansion over treaty obligations.
Gemini
Sunday, March 29, 2026
How to end this war
How to end this war
(Unfortunately this writer did not live through the period of opposition to the Vietnam War which Martin Luther King Spoke about at a rally in New York’s Central Park in 1965, one . I remember my sister and I arguing about it. She supported the war which my mother and
I opposed.)
“The US war in Iran is the most unpopular at its onset, yet lacks organized opposition. This is attributed to the decline of social life, the failure of past revolutionary movements, and the shift in warfare from ground to air. However, these changes also present opportunities for a new, potentially more effective anti-war movement.
In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress for authorization to use military force in south-east Asia. His resolution passed unanimously in the House, and only two voices dissented in the Senate. As for the public, 77% of Americans said they trusted the government to do what is right, and more than 60% supported war.
It is common today to hear that the US war in Vietnam was unpopular, but it certainly did not begin that way. It took several years, billions of dollars, tens of thousands of deaths, and constant anti-war mobilization before Americans changed their minds.
The reality is that Americans have historically backed their government’s wars. Let’s not forget that most Americans not only falsely believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, but also supported the illegal US war on Iraq. A month after the invasion, support for the war increased to 74%.
Not any more. President Donald Trump did not even bother seeking congressional approval to attack Iran. Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose the Israeli-US war, and only 17% trust the government to do what is right. And the war is only a month old.
But while the war on Iran is the most unpopular a US war has ever been at its onset, this dramatic shift in sentiment has not yet translated into organized anti-war opposition.
There are many reasons for this – the deterioration of social life, which has made organizing more difficult; the failures of the wave of global revolutions that once inspired vigorous anti-war movements at home; and the transition of warfare from the ground to the skies, which has helped cushion the state from public pressure.
But there’s no reason to succumb to despair. These transformations do not in themselves make organizing impossible. In some ways they even open up new possibilities for emancipatory politics.
In an asymmetrical war, the weaker side generally cannot expect to defeat the more powerful aggressor exclusively through military confrontation. But it doesn’t need to.
Consider the Vietnam war. For the Vietnamese revolutionaries to win, they just had to survive long enough to prevent the US from realizing its objectives. And they accomplished this by making the war so costly that the US would have to withdraw.
Anti-war activists in the US and other capitalist countries similarly sought to end war by raising its costs. One of the most important tasks was shifting public sentiment. US politicians were sensitive to public opinion and vulnerable to regular elections. Anti-war solidarity could raise the cost of war by increasing the chances that pro-war politicians would suffer defeat at the polls.
Since Washington depended not only on domestic backing, but also the support of its capitalist allies, activists in these other countries put pressure on their governments to distance themselves from the US. In west Germany, for instance, public outcry over Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s excessively close ties to the US war effort helped bring down his government.
Anti-war activists also resorted to strikes, shutdowns and boycotts to add to the war’s economic ledger. In one example, activists organized a transnational boycott of the Dow Chemical Company, which produced not only napalm, but also consumer goods such as Saran wrap. This severely damaged Dow’s reputation, forcing the company to in effect cease manufacturing napalm for the government in 1969.
Other anti-war activists sought to degrade military capacity. They artfully linked broader anti-war concerns to the day-to-day grievances with military hierarchy and its attendant racial and class dimensions, dissuading some Americans from volunteering, encouraging draft resistance, assisting deserting GIs, organizing troops on the frontlines, and convincing soldiers to turn on their officers.
Still other activists tried to disrupt everyday life within the US, marching in the streets, obstructing traffic, blocking troop trains, shutting down induction centers, making universities ungovernable. In May 1970, for example, students simultaneously shut down nearly 900 colleges, universities, and high schools for nearly two weeks. The purpose of these sorts of actions, organizers argued, was “to raise the social cost of the war to a level unacceptable to America’s rulers”.
This activism within the imperial heartlands allowed the Vietnamese resistance to compensate for its military weaknesses on the battlefield by straining Washington’s capacity and willingness to continue fighting. Eventually the combined social, economic, military, political and ideological costs simply became too high, and the US withdrew from Vietnam in January 1973 without realizing any of its objectives.
But a great deal has changed since the 1960s and early 70s, which helps explain why today’s anti-war movements are relatively weaker than in those days.
For one, the level of associational culture – to say nothing of explicitly political organization – has receded. Anti-war activists did not just organize headline-grabbing mass marches. They patiently worked together to build a vast anti-war infrastructure – legal groups, GI coffeehouses, alternative newspapers and national anti-war coalitions – that could sustain a wide range of future actions.
In working towards that goal, anti-war activists benefited from the rich social fabric of associational life in the US – a fabric that has significantly frayed. Anti-war initiatives were buoyed up by unions, social clubs, book stores, civic groups, movement organizations, professional societies, immigrant community centers and religious institutions. They also drew upon a network of informal organization, whether born of the working-class neighborhood, the intensity of student life, or the collaborative relationships of the workplace. This ecosystem helped activists fundraise, recruit members, secure meeting spaces, and reach wider communities. They ensured that when the anti-war call was sounded, there was an audience available to respond.
Since the 70s, however, social life has been dramatically reconfigured: associational life has steadily declined, working-class institutions have been hollowed out, and Americans have become more atomized than ever before. In the absence of a sturdy associational matrix, Americans have now turned to the internet as a sort of surrogate social community, replacing the hard work of in-person organizing with consuming news, sharing posts or debating anonymous opponents on platforms owned by the very warmongers they oppose.
Moreover, we live in a different international context. The anti-war movements of the 60s emerged at a time when emancipatory struggles were erupting everywhere – not just in Vietnam, but also in Cuba, Algeria, China, Palestine, South Africa, Guinea-Bissau.
These struggles were winning. In Cuba, a tiny band of guerrillas worked in tandem with militant workers to overthrow Fulgencio Batista, then resist US invasion. In Algeria, anticolonial fighters expelled the French settlers. In Vietnam, revolutionaries held their own against the most powerful military in history. These miraculous victories, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartreexplained, expanded “the field of the possible”. They convinced millions that it was possible to unite across borders to create a new world.
But those seemingly victorious struggles fell far short of expectations. Soon after the fall of Saigon in 1975, many anti-war activists watched in disbelief as thousands of refugees fled from the repressive rule of the heroic guerrillas that activists once lionized. And when the new world never arrived, optimism gave way to disillusionment.
We walk amid the ruins of the failed emancipatory projects of the past. Although people today are disgusted with the status quo, many are pessimistic about the possibility of changing the world, uncertain of an alternative – an attitude which makes organizing that much harder.
War-making has also shifted. Although concentrating workers in huge factories, conscripting young people, and sending ground troops to Vietnam allowed the US government to field a big army, this style of war created many weaknesses, which anti-war organizers exploited to great effect. In response, the US has gradually turned to more remote forms of warfare to minimize casualties and insulate itself from organized popular pressure.
Consider the political blowback from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which encouraged the Pentagon to lean even more heavily on assassinations, special forces, proxy groups, extensive airstrikes and drone warfare over the last decade. There were nearly 550,000 US personnel in Vietnam in 1969. That fell to a peak of 180,000 in Iraq. Today there are only 50,000 personnel nearIran (though the US continues to foolishly threaten a ground invasion).
These shifts make some of the strategies that prior movements championed no longer as effective, and many Americans now struggle to see how they can have an impact.
These changes certainly present challenges to a new mass movement to oppose US wars. But, perhaps counterintuitively, they also create an opportunity for a potentially even more effective anti-war movement than those of the past.
Associational life may be in decline, but it’s not extinct. Many long for community today, which means organizers have an opportunity to not only reconstitute hollowed out social institutions, but also invent better ones. In the past, anti-war activists had to weave politics into otherwise apolitical settings. Today, it may be possible to re-establish organized associational life on a new, inclusive, and more explicitly emancipatory basis.
Ours may not be an era of victorious revolutions, but anti-imperialist struggles still abound, and some are expanding the field of the possible. Think of the Palestinian struggle. As Nasser Abourahme has shown, despite facing less favorable odds than the Vietnamese did, the Palestinians remain steadfast in the face of Israel’s genocide, and, with the help of a vibrant international solidarity movement, they’ve turned public opinion against Israel. The recent successes of Palestine activism have shown that it may be possible to organize in unfavorable international conditions and develop a movement whose fate is not dependent on the promise of immediate victory.
As for the new style of war-making, it also offers opportunities for organizing. Although it keeps US casualties low, it is extraordinarily expensive – a single Thaad interceptor costs $12.7m. And although this style of war can score tactical victories, it has seduced the US government into substituting spectacles for attainable political objectives. This is precisely what leads imperialist powers to defeat: the inability to realize their political objectives.
Today’s war is creating new weaknesses – and new opportunities for organizing. Just look at what the Israeli-US war has done to the price of gas. This absurdly expensive style of war – the US burned through nearly $13bn in the first six days – is exacerbating the most salient domestic issue: the affordability crisis. Unpopularity, eye-watering expense, and unclear objectives have left the US so cornered that it’s even had to lift sanctions on Iranian oil. That combination creates enormous potential for anti-war activists in the US to raise the social, political and economic price of this war.
Although our era is very different from that of the Vietnam war, the same imperative of anti-war organizing holds: finding ways to collectively raise the cost of war from within. The task is to adapt this goal to the changed context of the present.
Arrayed against the largest and most technologically capable war machine ever assembled, it can be hard to know where to begin. Nevertheless, there are north stars for us to follow, and some small steps to take together.
Start by talking. The internet may be a great way to educate yourself, but it does not replace organizing. If anything, too much time online leads to exhaustion, emotional dysregulation, and intransigence. The basis of politics is engaging with people who are not like you in order to build the collective vision, capacity, and organizations needed to change the world. To do that, you need to talk to people in person, look them in the eye, and listen to their concerns. Don’t guilt them for not doing enough; invite them to share their thoughts. Discover what matters to them – gas prices, dead schoolgirls, the rule of law – and then work your way outward. Make concern for the war an unavoidable topic of everyday conversation. The best conversations will be among those who are well placed to take action together: neighbors, schoolmates, co-workers or anyone otherwise bound together in an institutional or group setting.
Second, connect the issues. There’s sometimes a tendency to treat wars as far-flung affairs that have little to do with life in America, and so not as personal or pressing as other matters. One way to advance the anti-war cause, then, is to show how this war on Iran is actually tied to urgent everyday grievances such as the rising cost of living, as well as domestic issues such as AI, racism, the Epstein files, the erosion of democracy, the power of the pro-Israel lobby in US politics and the unchecked power of ICE. It’s telling, for example, that the same tech companies helping the US military kill Iranians abroad are working with ICE at home. Pointing out how the war and imperialism are dimensions of these other issues not only sustains anti-war work by broadening its social bases, it makes it easier to imagine how anti-war activists might “raise the costs” of war-making for Washington.
Third, pressuring politicians. On its own, voting does not end wars, particularly when the powers of Congress are in an acute crisis. But elections can be effective ways to voice demands and pressure politicians when they are at their most vulnerable. This is especially true as we enter the midterm election season. The Democrats know that the party’s support for Israel hurt them in the last election, that a supermajority of Democratic voters have turned against the country, and that they can’t retake Congress without anti-war voters. This is a great opportunity to make opposition to not only this war, but all imperialist wars a litmus test for the politicians who need your vote. Make the price of your vote clear.
We also need to be strategic about our targets outside the government. Organizing should focus on the places that buttress the state’s capacity for imperial adventure. Workers in manufacturing, logistics, research and media are critical points through which imperial policy passes, and pressure points on which people can focus. Such nascent efforts to organize against war can be seen, for example, in researchers refusing Department of Defense contracts to workers in ports and passenger aviation objecting to the presence of dangerous munitions on the job.
Americans can also continue to isolate Israel – one of the most destabilizing forces in the world today. It is violating international laws, committing genocide in Gaza, colonizing the West Bank, and attacking countries such as Iran. Having failed to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran last summer, Israel has convinced the US to do its dirty work.
Washington has not just given Israel more aid than any other country in US history; the US provides Israel with settlers, weapons, technology, and diplomatic cover. Although advantageous to Israel, this intimate relationship leaves it exposed. Between the US and Israel lie thousands of links, which go beyond Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet – aid, tourism, trade deals, academic partnerships, municipal bonds – and each is a potential point of popular pressure. The US government’s support for Israel has direct impacts at home – it wastes taxpayer money, undermines civil liberties and puts American lives at risk – and activists should be vocal about making those connections.
Finally, we need to think a few steps ahead instead of simply reacting. In the 60s, organizers held fast to the analysis that their task was not just to end the Vietnam war, but also to prevent future “Vietnams”. Even if Trump were to quickly call off the war on Iran, there’s a good chance that the US will start another war, especially now that the international order is more volatile than it has been in decades. A resilient and growing anti-war movement would be indispensable.
That means that while one-off days of action serve a purpose, they are most effective when oriented towards organizing for the long haul. After all, it takes a long time to end wars. While the No Kings protests this weekend have been an impressive demonstration of widespread opposition to Trump, including his program of military adventure, large marches alone will not develop the disruptive power or robust mobilizing capacity necessary to arrest US imperialism. To do that, large marches must become on-ramps for more sustained involvement in organization: new groups that can pool resources, engage wider ranks of supporters, deliberate over strategy, and invite people to become involved in the quotidian work of movement building.
Building this movement may feel like an overwhelming undertaking. But the situation is quite favorable to its emergence. The American public is more informed, more opposed to US imperial wars, more distrustful of the state, more critical of Israel and more eager for meaningful change than ever.
It is possible to collectively win a better future without war. The only missing ingredients are vision, commitment and organization. And those are all thankfully within our own control.
Once a foe, Lindsey Graham is now Trump’s biggest Iran war booster: ‘The most pro-war Republican out there’
Once a foe, Lindsey Graham is now Trump’s biggest Iran war booster: ‘The most pro-war Republican out there’
“Lindsey Graham, a long-time Iran hawk, is a strong supporter of Trump’s war efforts in Iran, advocating for further escalation and regime change. Critics argue that Graham’s influence over Trump and his aggressive stance on war make him a dangerous figure in Washington. Despite some opposition within his party, Graham remains a loyal ally of Trump and continues to push for a more aggressive approach towards Iran.
To sceptics, Donald Trump’s war in Iran is a hubristic blunder that could spiral further out of control and bring catastrophe to the world. To Lindsey Graham, it is a dream come true.
The Republican senator from South Carolina spent decades spoiling for a fight with the regime in Tehran. He claimed that its overthrow would give the US president his own “Berlin Wall moment”. Now he is urging further escalation by invoking the bloody battle of Iwo Jima from the second world war.
For Graham’s critics, his sway over Trump, and his seemingly insatiable appetite for war at any cost, might make him the most dangerous man in Washington.
“Lindsey’s probably the most pro-war Republican out there,” said Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman turned Democrat. “He’s certainly the most visible. We’re talking about a guy who, if he could, would have American troops everywhere on the planet engaged in some sort of a war. He’s a war-hungry dude and he’s got Trump’s ear.”
Graham, 70, a retired air force reserve colonel who specialised as a military lawyer, was hostile to Iran long before Trump arrived on the political scene. Serving in the House of Representatives in the 1990s, he supported attempts to isolate the country and curb its missile and nuclear programmes.
Elected to the Senate in 2002 as the US prepared for war with Iraq, he frequently warned that Iran was exploiting the conflict to expand its regional influence. He opposed the nuclear agreement negotiated under Barack Obama and in 2015 urged the US to act pre-emptively to ensure that Iran’s “air force, their navy and their army is a shell of its former self”.
This muscular approach appeared at odds with Trump’s “America First” instincts, which were suspicious of overseas interventions. It was far from the only difference between the two men. Graham, who periodically worked across the aisle with Democrats, fiercely opposed Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican party in 2016.
He posted on Twitter: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.” He also dismissed Trump as a “jackass”, “a race-baiting bigot” and “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican party”. Trump retorted that the South Carolina senator was an “idiot” and a “lightweight”.
But when it became clear that Trump was unstoppable, Graham fell into line. He was flattered to be invited to fly on the Marine One helicopter, regularly played golf with the president, and became a valued interlocutor between the White House and Congress. In 2018 he was an outspoken defender of Trump’s embattled nominee for the supreme court, Brett Kavanaugh.
That same year witnessed the death of John McCain, a close friend of Graham’s and a bitter rival of Trump. Reed Galen, who was deputy campaign manager for McCain’s presidential campaign, believes this moment was pivotal. “He’s always needed a north star and until John McCain died, it was John McCain,” Galen said.
“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.”
Graham has been a loyal foot soldier ever since. Except once. After Trump’s supporters rioted at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in an effort to overturn his election defeat, Graham delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor: “Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey – I hate it to end 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.”
But when seven Republican senators subsequently voted to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection”, Graham was not among them. And when the 2024 presidential election came around, he was back on the Trump train. On the golf course, Fox News and elsewhere, he got to work persuading Trump that dealing with Iran could be a vital part of his second-term legacy.
Graham told Politico recently: “We were thinking about this early, early on about how Iran is a spoiler for expanding the Abraham accords and stability in the Mideast. I told him before he took office … if you can collapse this terrorist regime, that’s Berlin Wall stuff.”
This led to a months-long dialogue and a final burst of lobbying “in the last several weeks”, Graham told Politico, with the pair discussing Iran fewer than 48 hours before the war began. Finally, after decades of striving, Graham’s prize was within reach.
Jon Hoffman, a research fellow in defence and foreign policy with the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning thinktank in Washington, told the Associated Press: “You’re seeing essentially a child on Christmas morning who has gotten everything that he’s ever dreamed of. And that’s not best for the country, obviously, but it’s best for Lindsey Graham’s ideology.”
But Graham has no intention of resting on his laurels. He continues to try shaping the war as he sees fit. On 8 March he used X to express Washington’s dismay at ally Israel for overreaching by striking 30 Iranian fuel depots, urging Tel Aviv to “please be cautious about what targets you select” lest it cripple Iran’s chance to rebuild.
And even as the war drags on longer than many expected, with Iran blockading the crucial strait of Hormuz, Graham wants more. On Fox News last Sunday he advocated for US marines to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub, lying about 20 miles off the coast of the mainland. He said: “We did Iwo Jima, we can do this.”
Iwo Jima is famous for a photo of marines raising the US flag but was also marked by fierce fighting over 36 days on the heavily fortified Japanese island where nearly 7,000 marines and sailors died, with roughly 20,000 wounded, while more than 18,000 Japanese soldiers died.
Graham’s comments exposed fractures in his own party. Congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina posted on X: “Lindsey Graham needs to be removed from the Situation Room. I don’t want to hear one word from a guy with no kids, desperately sending our sons and daughters into war on the ground in Iran.”
But while some loud “Make America great again” (Maga) voters have decried the Iran intervention, nine in 10 Maga-aligned Republicans still support the war, according to an NBC News poll. Graham also provides reassurance to a Republican establishment that feared Trump would no longer project US power against its enemies.
John Bolton, a national security adviser during Trump’s first term, said: “He is an important voice. If our objective is to overthrow the regime then I think Lindsey’s probably urging Trump in that direction. I think it’s a good thing.”
Voters will have their say. In a South Carolina Senate primary election in June, Graham must see off a challenge from Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, who has branded him “essentially anti-Maga”, then in November take on a Democratic candidate sure to be galvanised by public anger at Trump.
Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director who now runs the Seneca Project political action committee, said: “Lindsey Graham has been a warmonger for the majority of his career.
“He is someone who seemingly has no reservations sending our men and women into battle where it suits his political desires. His display – he’s virtually foaming at the mouth to send our troops into harm’s way – is grotesque and I hope that he pays a political price for that in South Carolina as he is up for re-election.”
Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in South Carolina, added: “No one believes that we should be at war, including conservatives who campaigned with Donald Trump and his ‘America First’ agenda. Lindsey Graham is doing his best audition for an audience of one, and that’s Donald Trump.”