Latest / The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson / Remembering my Friend Lindsey Graham: Who he was as a Person & Why he left such an Extraordinary Legacy

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Remembering my Friend Lindsey Graham: Who he was as a Person & Why he left such an Extraordinary Legacy · The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome.
0:01
Speaker 2: It is Verdict with Center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
0:04
Speaker 2: and this is going to be one of those shows
0:06
Speaker 2: that is It's a hard one.
0:08
Speaker 1: Center.
0:08
Speaker 2: One of your best friends in the Senate, a dear
0:11
Speaker 2: friend of yours, someone that I've gotten to know over
0:14
Speaker 2: the last several gosh twenty plus years. You woke up
0:18
Speaker 2: to the same shocking news that I did, that Lindsay
0:20
Speaker 2: Graham had passed away suddenly. And this is someone that
0:23
Speaker 2: you worked with and knew so well.
0:26
Speaker 3: Look, this was a hard day. This was a shocking day.
0:29
Speaker 3: I woke up, as so many people did across America,
0:33
Speaker 3: with the news that Lindsay had passed away of what
0:38
Speaker 3: has been reported to be a massive heart attack at
0:41
Speaker 3: his home Saturday night. I was stunned. I had five
0:45
Speaker 3: or six texts in my phone as I woke up,
0:49
Speaker 3: and I just stared at them in disbelief. It did
0:51
Speaker 3: not seem real. Lindsey was a good friend of mine.
0:57
Speaker 3: Lindsey he was one of a kind. He was someone
1:01
Speaker 3: He and I did not always see eye to eye.
1:03
Speaker 3: In fact, we battled on a lot of issues, but
1:06
Speaker 3: we also agreed on a whole bunch of issues, and
1:08
Speaker 3: we were close allies fighting for years to confirm conservative
1:14
Speaker 3: judges and conservative conservative justices. We were close allies fighting
1:19
Speaker 3: to defend the Second Amendment. We were close allies fighting
1:23
Speaker 3: to support the men and women of the military. We
1:26
Speaker 3: were close allies fighting to defend our national security, to
1:31
Speaker 3: stand with our allies, to stand with Israel. And we
1:35
Speaker 3: were close allies standing up to America's enemies, that especially Iran.
1:39
Speaker 3: And and Lindsay was someone he was a force of nature.
1:44
Speaker 3: But his personality. I gotta say, if you spent time
1:50
Speaker 3: with Lindsay, I think it was impossible to dislike Lindsay.
1:54
Speaker 3: He was charming. He was funny as hell, like just
1:59
Speaker 3: witty for you. Years. I used to say to Lindsay
2:02
Speaker 3: and John Kennedy, I'd ask each of them, I don't
2:05
Speaker 3: know which one of you is funnier, and they'd kind
2:07
Speaker 3: of both sort of bow up their chests and get
2:09
Speaker 3: mad at E and I. Actually, I do have a theory.
2:13
Speaker 3: I think John Kennedy is the better stand up comedian.
2:17
Speaker 3: Like like if John Kennedy and John prepares a fair
2:20
Speaker 3: amount of his material, but when he's delivering it, he
2:22
Speaker 3: could be a professional comedian. Yes, But Lindsey was wittier
2:27
Speaker 3: just sitting there. He would fire zingers that you're like
2:32
Speaker 3: it was, and many of them were self deprecating. He
2:36
Speaker 3: did not take himself too seriously. He would make fun
2:38
Speaker 3: of himself like crazy he did. And it was you know,
2:44
Speaker 3: I've traveled abroad with Lindsey multiple times. He loved our
2:51
Speaker 3: country absolutely with a passion. Look, Lindsay wasn't married, he
2:57
Speaker 3: didn't have kids. Every ounce of his life was the Senate.
3:02
Speaker 3: He would travel all over the world. I mean, it's
3:04
Speaker 3: just what he did. He was out, you know, I
3:08
Speaker 3: think it was beautiful in some ways fitting. So he
3:10
Speaker 3: had just come back from Ukraine. He'd been meeting with
3:13
Speaker 3: President Zelensky. He came back to the United States Saturday night.
3:17
Speaker 3: He was on the phone with President Trump. And by
3:19
Speaker 3: the way, he was one of President Trump's closest friends.
3:24
Speaker 3: And I say that without exaggeration because Lindsay and Trump
3:26
Speaker 3: disagreed on a lot of issues. But Trump loved the guy,
3:32
Speaker 3: and it was was hard.
3:33
Speaker 2: If you saw him talking about him on Meet the Press,
3:36
Speaker 2: He's like he kind of had like unfeathered access to
3:38
Speaker 2: the White House. He goes, he really did a lot
3:40
Speaker 2: of people, but he was like Lindsay just came over
3:42
Speaker 2: all the time.
3:44
Speaker 3: Look, Lindsay was like the Trump whisper. He would call Trump.
3:49
Speaker 3: He talked to him early in the morning, he talked
3:50
Speaker 3: to him late at night. He talked to him day
3:52
Speaker 3: after day after day, and Trump would Trump didn't always
3:55
Speaker 3: agree with him, but he would listen to him and
3:57
Speaker 3: Lindsey when Trump was really mad about at something, Lindsay
4:00
Speaker 3: could kind of walk him back off that cliff a
4:02
Speaker 3: little bit. Lindsey was like, and I've spent a lot
4:06
Speaker 3: of time with Lindsay and Trump together, and the bond
4:09
Speaker 3: they had was really special, and it was in some
4:14
Speaker 3: ways almost a perfect distillation of his life. That he
4:18
Speaker 3: is in Ukraine, he flies back to the United States,
4:21
Speaker 3: He's on the phone with President Trump, and Sunday morning
4:25
Speaker 3: he was scheduled to be on Meet the Press. It
4:27
Speaker 3: would have been his sixty fourth appearance on Meet the Press.
4:31
Speaker 1: And that's a lot in politics.
4:33
Speaker 2: By the way, Meet the Press is kind of like
4:37
Speaker 2: Saturday Night Live. If you're like a celebrity being on
4:41
Speaker 2: Meet the Press. That's a number that I would love
4:43
Speaker 2: to know what that is ranking compared to other Republicans.
4:45
Speaker 2: You've done it a lot, but it's not sixty something times.
4:48
Speaker 3: Now. I've done it a lot, but it's nowhere close
4:51
Speaker 3: to that. And I try to be pretty deliberate. I
4:54
Speaker 3: do Sunday shows when I've got a particular message that
4:57
Speaker 3: I'm trying to drive, like when there's a re and
5:00
Speaker 3: I try to be quite deliberate about doing it. Lindsay, Look, look,
5:03
Speaker 3: I have two teenage daughters, I've got a wife, I've
5:06
Speaker 3: got a family. I want to be back in Texas,
5:08
Speaker 3: you know, with my family, and so a Sunday show
5:11
Speaker 3: there had to be a reason to do it. Yeah, Lindsay.
5:14
Speaker 3: Part of what he was was just a warrior. Every
5:16
Speaker 3: day he'd go do the Sunday shows where the news
5:18
Speaker 3: were great. He'd go to the Sunday shows when the
5:20
Speaker 3: news was terrible and like nobody wanted to be out
5:23
Speaker 3: there defending whatever was on fire at that moment, and
5:26
Speaker 3: Lindsay was like, I'll do it, and he would. Part
5:28
Speaker 3: of it is he would do it in a cheerful, funny,
5:32
Speaker 3: affable way. If things were a mess, he'd kind of acknowledge, yeah,
5:35
Speaker 3: they're a mess, but you know, all right. It was
5:40
Speaker 3: I literally have been been walking around in a daze
5:43
Speaker 3: much of today because I mean, I spent a lot
5:47
Speaker 3: of time with Lindsay and we would go out, and
5:48
Speaker 3: I've been texting you guys.
5:50
Speaker 2: By the way, you shared a picture that probably up
5:52
Speaker 2: on your phone. You guys were recently in.
5:54
Speaker 3: Paris, so so, and this was just you know how
5:57
Speaker 3: iPhone kind of randomly picks pictures. Now, I'm sort of
6:01
Speaker 3: convinced our phones like spy on us and know everything.
6:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, that's that is accurate. I agree with
6:09
Speaker 1: you on that one.
6:10
Speaker 3: But bizarrely enough, today my iPhone kind of midday popped
6:14
Speaker 3: up a picture of me and Lindsey and Katie Britt
6:19
Speaker 3: and Eric Schmidt, all four of us in Paris, and
6:22
Speaker 3: we're on a river boat and we're right in front
6:24
Speaker 3: of the Eiffel Tower and we went for the eightieth
6:26
Speaker 3: anniversary of D Day. It was an amazing trip. It
6:29
Speaker 3: was a powerful, beautiful trip with you know, we got
6:32
Speaker 3: to see these World War Two veterans who it's the
6:35
Speaker 3: very tail end of their journey on Earth, and the
6:38
Speaker 3: four of us are just arm in arm and it
6:43
Speaker 3: was just beautiful. And I've been I've been texting and
6:45
Speaker 3: talking to friends and colleagues and all of us are
6:48
Speaker 3: just going, this doesn't seem real real, Yeah, I mean
6:54
Speaker 3: it's you know, I did an interview with a reporter
6:58
Speaker 3: today who said, who who will fill the void? Who
7:01
Speaker 3: will fill Lindsey Graham's shoes? And my answer is nobody. Nobody.
7:06
Speaker 3: The role he played in the Senate, he was universally respected,
7:12
Speaker 3: but also universally liked and even adored by people who
7:16
Speaker 3: disagreed with him. Passionately he could be by the way,
7:22
Speaker 3: the guy was as effective a cross examiner as I've
7:25
Speaker 3: ever seen. Lindsay was a South Carolina trial lawyer, and
7:30
Speaker 3: he could on the Judiciary Committee, the.
7:33
Speaker 2: Two committees together, So people understand you guys, it wasn't
7:37
Speaker 2: just being like centers together. You guys worked on committees
7:41
Speaker 2: as well.
7:42
Speaker 3: We worked Judiciary. We spent thousands of hours together. We
7:46
Speaker 3: were on Senate Armed Services together, we were on Foreign
7:48
Speaker 3: Relations together, and we just worked hand in hand on
7:52
Speaker 3: a lot of issues. There are issues where we disagreed immigration.
7:55
Speaker 3: Lindsay and I were in very different places, but there
7:58
Speaker 3: were a lot of issues when Lindsey was with you.
8:03
Speaker 3: I don't know that there was a more potent ally
8:05
Speaker 3: in the Senate when he was with you. Yeah, and
8:09
Speaker 3: it would he could be Look it was I can't count.
8:16
Speaker 3: There are a hundred different Senate Republican lunches when people
8:19
Speaker 3: were having really passionate, sharp disagreements about something and Lindsay
8:24
Speaker 3: would stand up and say something, and he'd always have
8:27
Speaker 3: a joke and people be double or laughing. There be
8:29
Speaker 3: times when people are like screaming at each other, almost
8:31
Speaker 3: ready to like, you know, take a swing at each other. Yeah,
8:35
Speaker 3: and Lindsey would sort of cut the tension and bring
8:39
Speaker 3: people back to the task at hand. You know, when
8:44
Speaker 3: I'm in DC fairly regularly, I'll have dinner with other
8:47
Speaker 3: senators and there's kind of a group of folks that
8:49
Speaker 3: I invite that are sort of the like guys I
8:51
Speaker 3: like hanging out with. And Lindsey was almost the auto invite,
8:56
Speaker 3: because if Lindsay showed up at the table, your ribs
9:00
Speaker 3: it hurt from laughing. And by the way, it wasn't
9:03
Speaker 3: just that he was like telling jokes. He was just
9:06
Speaker 3: insightful and smart and he cared.
9:09
Speaker 2: Look, look, whether he loved his country, that's one of
9:11
Speaker 2: the things he I don't think people understand how much
9:14
Speaker 2: he loved this country. You mentioned didn't have he wasn't married,
9:17
Speaker 2: he didn't have kids. His family was America. His family
9:20
Speaker 2: was defending America. I said this this morning on Fox
9:24
Speaker 2: and Friends. He had a grand It was a love
9:27
Speaker 2: story with the United States of America.
9:30
Speaker 3: Yes, I'll tell you. It was also with our military,
9:32
Speaker 3: So lindsaysolutely. Lindsey spent thirty three years in the Air Force,
9:37
Speaker 3: active duties.
9:38
Speaker 1: As a colonel. People don't know that.
9:40
Speaker 3: He rose up to being a colonel. I did tell him.
9:43
Speaker 3: I said, lindsay, if the clowns at the Pentagon ever
9:45
Speaker 3: try to give you a star, damn it, I'm going
9:48
Speaker 3: to the Florida filibuster it. I ain't calling you General Graham.
9:51
Speaker 3: You could be Colonel Graham, but just understand there's a
9:55
Speaker 3: hard ceiling. And and he basically agreed with me and said, yeah,
9:59
Speaker 3: I sure hope that I'll make be a general. They should.
10:01
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, that's like a classic he was.
10:05
Speaker 3: And I've been with him both in the US and
10:08
Speaker 3: abroad where we would meet with service men and women,
10:12
Speaker 3: and he had a connection to the men and women
10:15
Speaker 3: of the armed services, a love affair where they loved
10:21
Speaker 3: him and I would see them come up and like
10:23
Speaker 3: hug him, and he would he viewed it as his mission.
10:28
Speaker 3: I'm going to fight for you. If you're defending this country,
10:30
Speaker 3: if you signed up to be in the military, I'm
10:33
Speaker 3: going to fight ferociously for you. And that was it
10:37
Speaker 3: was real, It was sincere. It was passionate. That was
10:42
Speaker 3: a beautiful thing. You know.
10:44
Speaker 2: I think one of the cool things about his services country.
10:47
Speaker 2: I've got a lot of friends that sign up after
10:49
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, and in politics sometimes they get frustrated
10:53
Speaker 2: with people that serve their country and they go to
10:56
Speaker 2: Washington and everything is based on why I was in
10:58
Speaker 2: the military, and you weren't kind of saying he didn't
11:01
Speaker 2: use his military service that night. And a lot of
11:04
Speaker 2: people didn't realize that. Number one, he was a colonel
11:07
Speaker 2: until he passed away. A lot of people didn't realize
11:09
Speaker 2: he was in for thirty years. A lot of you
11:10
Speaker 2: didn't realize he was in the reserves while serving his country.
11:13
Speaker 2: In Congress, he continued to be in the reserves and
11:17
Speaker 2: to continue to do that.
11:18
Speaker 1: But he didn't come in and.
11:19
Speaker 2: Go, well, I would I serve it wasn't a trump
11:22
Speaker 2: card for him, and it was it was. It was
11:25
Speaker 2: he obviously fought hard for military and he fought hard
11:29
Speaker 2: for things in a state that were related to military
11:31
Speaker 2: and military complex and bases. But it wasn't his number
11:35
Speaker 2: one thing on TV, like, well, let me tell you
11:37
Speaker 2: why because I served and you didn't.
11:39
Speaker 1: He didn't use it that way publicly.
11:41
Speaker 3: Never.
11:41
Speaker 2: A lot and a lot of people that I know
11:43
Speaker 2: that are in the military and have recently retired that
11:45
Speaker 2: gave twenty twenty five years, that's what they liked about
11:48
Speaker 2: him the most.
11:49
Speaker 3: Well, And look to understand Lindsay, he grew up in
11:53
Speaker 3: modest circumstances in South Carolina. He grew up his parents
11:58
Speaker 3: ran a bar in a pool hall. And part of
12:01
Speaker 3: to understand Lindsay's magic is he was like the best
12:05
Speaker 3: bartender you've ever seen, who would smile and crack a
12:09
Speaker 3: joke and and and whether you were celebrating a great
12:13
Speaker 3: thing that happened in your life, or you were there
12:16
Speaker 3: weeping because your wife just divorced you, or you just
12:19
Speaker 3: had a death in the family, and and he could,
12:22
Speaker 3: he could the charm that he brought, the sort of
12:25
Speaker 3: effortless I remember years ago, I was at a Silver
12:29
Speaker 3: Elephant dinner, which is the big Republican dinner in South Carolina,
12:32
Speaker 3: and he was speaking there and at the time Ryan's
12:36
Speaker 3: previous was the chairman of the r NC. And I
12:39
Speaker 3: think Rynce was speaking at that dinner. This was a
12:41
Speaker 3: while ago, but I think Ryance was speaking at that dinner.
12:43
Speaker 3: I remember Lindsay got up and went Right's previous, Ryan's previous,
12:50
Speaker 3: What the hell is? That is not like a French
12:52
Speaker 3: electric car and like it brought the house down. I
12:59
Speaker 3: mean he would throw lines out there all the time,
13:05
Speaker 3: and it was he also had a special gift for
13:10
Speaker 3: I would say, earning the trust of and providing really
13:16
Speaker 3: valuable counsel to extraordinarily volatile, larger than life figures. And
13:24
Speaker 3: two in particular, John McCain and Donald Trump. Yes, now,
13:28
Speaker 3: look John McCain. I served a lot of years with John.
13:31
Speaker 3: When I arrived in the Senate, John McCain hated my guts.
13:35
Speaker 3: In fact, he was quoted as saying I hate his
13:37
Speaker 3: eff and guts. Like John and I battled in a
13:41
Speaker 3: bloody way. Yes, over the years, John and I became friends,
13:46
Speaker 3: but John was, you know, in terms of the history
13:50
Speaker 3: of the Senate, John McCain was one of those legends
13:53
Speaker 3: who have walked the halls of the Senate. I disagreed
13:55
Speaker 3: with so many positions John had. But the man was
13:58
Speaker 3: a war hero, the man for a country. He was.
14:01
Speaker 3: He was imprisoned in Vietnam, he was tortured, he denied
14:04
Speaker 3: early release. I mean he was larger than life, yes,
14:07
Speaker 3: and he could be volcanic like John's temper.
14:13
Speaker 1: It was real. It was real. Oh I had been
14:16
Speaker 1: I've been on the other end of that. You've been
14:17
Speaker 1: on the other end of that, and it is.
14:19
Speaker 2: Let me tell you, I the talking to is that
14:21
Speaker 2: I received earlier in my career were brutal when I
14:25
Speaker 2: got them.
14:26
Speaker 3: Lindsey was John McCain's best friend in the Senate and
14:29
Speaker 3: he was the McCain whisperer. I mean, it was an
14:32
Speaker 3: amazing thing. And Lindsey would kind of soften John's you know,
14:36
Speaker 3: he come in and pound the hell out of someone,
14:38
Speaker 3: and Lindsey start to cut a joke and like, you
14:41
Speaker 3: know men, Yeah, it was.
14:44
Speaker 2: Joeberman said he spoke Democrat and Republican. Well is I
14:48
Speaker 2: think the way he described it, he could. He could,
14:50
Speaker 2: he could, and he could speak McCain, which was really important.
14:54
Speaker 3: And he also speaks Trump like. Look their times, just
14:58
Speaker 3: like John McCain. We get pissed off. There are times.
15:01
Speaker 3: This is no secret. When Donald Trump gets pissed off
15:03
Speaker 3: and when he's angry and he's like on a tear, Lindsey,
15:07
Speaker 3: we kind of all say, Lindsey, go on in there
15:09
Speaker 3: and sort of talk him down, and Lindsey could. It
15:13
Speaker 3: was an amazing thing. He'd just sort of laugh a
15:16
Speaker 3: little bit, and you know, Trump would yell at him,
15:19
Speaker 3: and he'd make Trump laugh and it would just soften
15:21
Speaker 3: the whole thing. He had a gift for that. And
15:25
Speaker 3: it was not just because he wanted people to like him.
15:28
Speaker 3: He had a gift because he was trying to get
15:30
Speaker 3: these these great men. He was trying to move them
15:33
Speaker 3: in what he believed was a positive direction for America.
15:36
Speaker 3: And it was a beautiful thing to watch him do that.
15:42
Speaker 3: I will say, Lindsey, some of y'all who listened to
15:45
Speaker 3: Verdict may not know this. Lindsey Graham was the very
15:48
Speaker 3: first guest yes in the history of Verdict, Like when
15:52
Speaker 3: we had just launched this show. This show launched on
15:55
Speaker 3: the first night of the very first Trump impeachment, and
15:58
Speaker 3: the show went from zero. Look, before we launched, we
16:02
Speaker 3: had zero viewers, zero listeners. Yeah, it's skyrocketed up the
16:06
Speaker 3: charts and it became the number one ranked podcast in
16:09
Speaker 3: the world. And as we're doing it, and we would
16:12
Speaker 3: do it every night. This was Peb pre Ben. This
16:18
Speaker 3: is what I was doing with Michael Knowles, who is
16:20
Speaker 3: a great friend of both of ours. Yeah, and it
16:24
Speaker 3: would be every night after the impeachment trial. We'd go
16:28
Speaker 3: into a verdict that night and put it out real time,
16:31
Speaker 3: and Lindsey came, all right, I want you to watch
16:34
Speaker 3: the cold open for our show that Lindsey recorded as
16:38
Speaker 3: our very first guest ever.
16:41
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16:43
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18:53
Speaker 2: This is again the Cold Open Lindsey Graham, the first
18:56
Speaker 2: guest on Verdict back in the day.
18:58
Speaker 1: Hello, I'm sinner instam.
19:00
Speaker 4: Welcome to Verdict with Ted Cruz, the number one podcast
19:04
Speaker 4: in the entire country.
19:05
Speaker 1: What is a podcast?
19:15
Speaker 5: Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles.
19:18
Speaker 5: I'm joined by not one, but two US Senators to
19:22
Speaker 5: help us break down the most shocking day of the
19:25
Speaker 5: entire impeachment trial. Senator Graham, thank you so much for
19:28
Speaker 5: being here. Ad to be here, gentlemen. The last time
19:30
Speaker 5: that we sat down, I was told this impeachment was
19:34
Speaker 5: going to drag on for weeks. We were going to
19:35
Speaker 5: get witnesses, we were going to get Bolton, we were
19:37
Speaker 5: gonna get Hunter Biden. This was going to get long
19:39
Speaker 5: and ugly. I go to sleep, I wake up today
19:42
Speaker 5: and the Senators are voting no more witnesses. This thing
19:46
Speaker 5: could be over next week, Senator Cruz, what happened.
19:48
Speaker 3: Well, today was a big day. And let me say, Lindsey,
19:51
Speaker 3: thank you, well you I appreciate your coming. This is
19:54
Speaker 3: late at night. We spent all day in.
19:56
Speaker 4: The setting a lot of money on production.
19:59
Speaker 3: Sorry, well, this was you're right yesterday. If the vote
20:04
Speaker 3: had gone differently today, this trial could have gone on
20:07
Speaker 3: for months. We could have seen it drag on and
20:10
Speaker 3: on and on, and it was a big deal. It
20:12
Speaker 3: was up in the air, and today was the most
20:14
Speaker 3: important vote we've had in the.
20:15
Speaker 1: Entire By the way, I love it. Even there he
20:18
Speaker 1: cracked a joke.
20:18
Speaker 2: He's like, you're not spent a lot on production, Like
20:21
Speaker 2: he had to get his zinger in there.
20:22
Speaker 1: That's just what made Lindsay lindsay.
20:24
Speaker 3: Well, and look at the time, we were filming Verdict
20:28
Speaker 3: in a basement studio about a mile from Capitol Hill,
20:32
Speaker 3: and so we drove there after the day of the trial.
20:35
Speaker 3: It was like midnight, and you went to this basement studio.
20:37
Speaker 3: You walked at a dark alley and you walked down
20:40
Speaker 3: these like concrete stairs and listen, Lindsay and I at
20:44
Speaker 3: the time were not actually that close of friends. We
20:47
Speaker 3: had been more adversaries than friends. Our friendship developed over
20:50
Speaker 3: the years. And as we're walking down the stairs, he's like,
20:54
Speaker 3: I feel like Joe Peshi and Goodfellas, are you getting
20:58
Speaker 3: ready to whack me? Because like we're we're like walking
21:00
Speaker 3: into a dark basement in the middle of nowhere. And
21:05
Speaker 3: he looks around. In our studio, we had this this
21:08
Speaker 3: shag carpet out of the nineteen seventies. We had these big,
21:12
Speaker 3: old brown leather chairs. We had these giant microphones, kind
21:15
Speaker 3: of like we still have the giant microphones. Yea, And
21:18
Speaker 3: he says on the show, the cactus don't yeah, okay,
21:21
Speaker 3: I miss miss our cactus. Our cactus is still our
21:25
Speaker 3: cactus is still part of the Verdict family. But he
21:29
Speaker 3: looked around and he said this on the podcast, He's like,
21:33
Speaker 3: you guys are the number one podcast in the world.
21:38
Speaker 3: Who the hell is number two? Some guy in a
21:40
Speaker 3: van by the river like it was. It was side splitting,
21:47
Speaker 3: But but that charm it had real power. Yeah, because
21:53
Speaker 3: it would cause people to listen. It would break through
21:57
Speaker 3: and listen. He was not always joking. If you were
22:01
Speaker 3: to think of the singular moment, what is the number
22:06
Speaker 3: one thing people remember that Lindsey Graham did, and I'm
22:09
Speaker 3: going to suggest it was when during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation.
22:13
Speaker 2: I was gonna say no doubt Brett Kavanaugh and saving
22:16
Speaker 2: Brett Kavanaugh from the insanity of the left that were
22:19
Speaker 2: accusing him of the most horrific crimes without any evidence,
22:23
Speaker 2: making it up as they went trying to destroy him
22:26
Speaker 2: the same way they went after Klarence Thomas very much,
22:28
Speaker 2: but in a TMZ twenty twenty plus year type of
22:32
Speaker 2: going after him, just more vile social media. You didn't
22:36
Speaker 2: have that with a Clarence Thomas right, like Clarence Thomas
22:38
Speaker 2: was ABCNBC, CNN, it was mainstream now. They were trying
22:43
Speaker 2: to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh's integrity and they were using all
22:46
Speaker 2: social media to try to accomplish.
22:48
Speaker 3: It well, and Lindsey unloaded on the Democrats and it
22:52
Speaker 3: changed the entire dynamics of the hearing. I want you
22:56
Speaker 3: most of y'all have seen and heard this, but I
22:57
Speaker 3: want you to give a listen again, because I think
23:00
Speaker 3: there's a real argument without Lindsay doing this, Brett Kavanaugh
23:03
Speaker 3: may not get confirmed. Give a listen to Lindsay at
23:06
Speaker 3: the hearing.
23:07
Speaker 4: Are you aware that at nine to twenty three on
23:12
Speaker 4: the night of July the ninth, the day you were
23:14
Speaker 4: nominated to the Supreme Court by President Trump, Senator Schumer
23:18
Speaker 4: said twenty three minutes after your nomination, I will oppose
23:22
Speaker 4: Judge Kavanaugh's nomination with everything I have. I have a
23:26
Speaker 4: by parson. I hope a by person majority will do
23:29
Speaker 4: the same. The stakes are simply too high for anything less. Well,
23:34
Speaker 4: if you weren't aware of it, you are now. Did
23:36
Speaker 4: you meet with Senator Diane Feinstein on August twentieth? I
23:40
Speaker 4: did meet with centa Fine Sine. Did you know that
23:42
Speaker 4: her staff had already recommended a lawyer to doctor Ford?
23:46
Speaker 4: I did not know that. Did you know that her
23:49
Speaker 4: and her staff had this allegations for over twenty days?
23:54
Speaker 1: I did not know that at the time.
23:56
Speaker 4: If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come
23:59
Speaker 4: to us. What you want to do is destroy this
24:02
Speaker 4: guy's life, hold this seat open, and hope you went
24:05
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty.
24:07
Speaker 1: You've said that, not me.
24:10
Speaker 4: You've got nothing to apologize for. When you see Soda
24:14
Speaker 4: Maron Kagan, tell him that Lindsay said, oh, because I
24:17
Speaker 4: voted for them, I would never do to them what
24:21
Speaker 4: you've done to this guy. This is the most unethical
24:25
Speaker 4: sham since I've been in politics. And if you really
24:30
Speaker 4: wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn't
24:33
Speaker 4: have done what you've done to this guy. Are you
24:36
Speaker 4: a gang rapist? No? I cannot imagine what you and
24:41
Speaker 4: your family have gone through. Boy, y'all want power. God,
24:44
Speaker 4: I hope you never get it. I hope the American
24:47
Speaker 4: people can see through this sham that you knew about it,
24:50
Speaker 4: and you held it. You had no intention of protecting
24:54
Speaker 4: doctor Ford none. She's as much of a victim as
24:57
Speaker 4: you are. I hate to say that because these have
25:01
Speaker 4: been my friends, but let me tell you, when it
25:04
Speaker 4: comes to this, you're looking for a fair process. You
25:09
Speaker 4: came to the wrong town at the wrong time, My friend.
25:13
Speaker 2: Senator, you look at that frustration. That was genuine. It
25:18
Speaker 2: wasn't inauthentic, It wasn't something that was a pre planned moment.
25:23
Speaker 1: It wasn't scripted.
25:24
Speaker 2: We've see a lot of scripted moments from politicians these days,
25:27
Speaker 2: and some of these hearings there it's all pre organized,
25:30
Speaker 2: pre planned.
25:31
Speaker 1: Protesters involved.
25:33
Speaker 2: That was real and raw, and as you mentioned, and
25:37
Speaker 2: I think you should explain a little bit more. This
25:39
Speaker 2: forced and changed the direction that hearing was going well.
25:43
Speaker 3: And listen Lindsey's career. For a lot of his career,
25:46
Speaker 3: he's been a very bipartisan senator. Senator, He's worked with
25:49
Speaker 3: a lot of Democrats. As he noted, he voted to
25:52
Speaker 3: confirm both Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan, and the Democrats
25:57
Speaker 3: were all happy with him. They were all love w
25:58
Speaker 3: and so when he says, look, I would never do
26:00
Speaker 3: to them what you're doing to Brett Kavanaugh, that had
26:04
Speaker 3: power to it. I was sitting there at the DAAs
26:07
Speaker 3: when when Lindsay was unloading, and you could have heard
26:12
Speaker 3: a pin drop in the room, you know, the silence
26:15
Speaker 3: when he asked Brett Kavanaugh, are you a gang rapist?
26:18
Speaker 3: And Brett says no, and Lindsey's just silent for about
26:23
Speaker 3: four seconds, and the entire silence, there's not a peep
26:27
Speaker 3: in the hearing room. That was a riveting moment. And
26:32
Speaker 3: by the way, you mentioned Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas is
26:35
Speaker 3: on the Supreme Court because during his confirmation hearing, the
26:37
Speaker 3: Democrats did the same thing, which is they sand bagged
26:40
Speaker 3: him with allegations from Anita Hill, and the American people
26:45
Speaker 3: heard Anita Hill's testimony in Clarence Thomas's and by a
26:49
Speaker 3: margin of about two to one, they believe Justice Thomas.
26:53
Speaker 3: The same thing happened with Brett Kavanaugh. That's why Clarence
26:55
Speaker 3: Thomas got confirmed. That's why Brett Kavanaugh got confirmed. And
26:58
Speaker 3: Lindsey's that moment there played I think a real part
27:02
Speaker 3: in people assessing and saying, wait a second, this is
27:05
Speaker 3: not a real inquiry, This is not a fair assessment.
27:08
Speaker 3: This is a political slime job. These guys had these
27:11
Speaker 3: allegations for weeks. They sat on them, they held them back.
27:15
Speaker 3: This is it is a drive by shooting by partisans
27:19
Speaker 3: who just want power. That was what was effective. And
27:22
Speaker 3: I'll tell you so my mom, Ben, You know my mom.
27:26
Speaker 3: She's I love my mom. She's ninety one, about to
27:28
Speaker 3: be ninety two in November. She is as conservative it
27:31
Speaker 3: can be. My mom thinks you and I are a little wobbly.
27:34
Speaker 3: She is a rock rib conservative.
27:38
Speaker 2: By the way, I don't know if I ever said
27:39
Speaker 2: this on the show, I've never had more fun hanging
27:42
Speaker 2: out with your mom than your reelection night, watching her
27:46
Speaker 2: be excited, watching her son not a Senator her son
27:50
Speaker 2: yea when reelection and just the beaming joy on her face.
27:55
Speaker 2: You weren't there when in that part, you were busy
27:58
Speaker 2: and she came in and she he was just so happy,
28:01
Speaker 2: and I was like, this might be my favorite moment
28:03
Speaker 2: of the whole night.
28:05
Speaker 3: So my mom, prior to the Kavanaugh hearing, was not
28:09
Speaker 3: a Lindsey Graham fan. She mostly knew Lindsay because he
28:13
Speaker 3: and I had battled a lot on immigration. We had
28:15
Speaker 3: very different views on immigration, and so that's, you know,
28:18
Speaker 3: anyone who fights her son my mom doesn't like. And
28:22
Speaker 3: so when that cross examined examination ends, my mother sends
28:28
Speaker 3: me a text and says, okay, I now love Lindsey Graham.
28:37
Speaker 3: And I actually got up a few minutes later and
28:39
Speaker 3: I walked over to Lindsay and I pulled out my phone.
28:42
Speaker 3: I said, Lindsay, here's a text I just got from
28:45
Speaker 3: my mom. And I clicked on it and he cracked
28:48
Speaker 3: up laughing, and then my mother proceeded to go to
28:52
Speaker 3: his website and to give him thirty five dollars Are
28:56
Speaker 3: you serious that I'm I'm serious? And I told him,
29:00
Speaker 3: I said, Lindsay, in my entire time in politics, my
29:03
Speaker 3: mother's never contributed to my campaign and she's given you
29:07
Speaker 3: money like it was and he loved that. But it
29:11
Speaker 3: was look, he could be when he was engaged in
29:16
Speaker 3: a fight. He was as effective a warrior as you
29:22
Speaker 3: could see. And that was powerful, and it was he
29:28
Speaker 3: and I worked together. Look, you look last summer the
29:32
Speaker 3: Working Family's tax cut, the big reconciliation bill, which we've
29:35
Speaker 3: talked a lot about on this podcast. I still think
29:37
Speaker 3: it's the legislation that has the most conservative victories in
29:40
Speaker 3: it of any bill that's ever passed at a law
29:43
Speaker 3: h Lindsay was the chairman of the Budget Committee, and
29:47
Speaker 3: the Budget Committee plays a critical part in reconciliation has
29:51
Speaker 3: to pass the budget resolution to begin with, Lindsay and
29:55
Speaker 3: I worked hand in hand. I don't know that we
29:57
Speaker 3: win that reconciliation battle without Lindsay's leadership as chairman of
30:01
Speaker 3: the Budget Committee. And he would there were times when
30:05
Speaker 3: people are you know, look, our majority is not always
30:10
Speaker 3: rock solid. You have people that run off this way,
30:12
Speaker 3: run off that way, and to get fifty votes to
30:15
Speaker 3: yes is really really hard. And Lindsey was awfully good
30:22
Speaker 3: at it.
30:24
Speaker 1: He was all making friends.
30:27
Speaker 2: I mean, that's one of the lost arts in politics,
30:29
Speaker 2: I think is just how good he was at making
30:32
Speaker 2: friends and making friends that he disagreed with in his
30:37
Speaker 2: own party, and making friends on the side. But he
30:39
Speaker 2: also had just a way of understanding when there's moments
30:42
Speaker 2: to laugh and not.
30:44
Speaker 1: I told this earlier. I was young. I don't think
30:46
Speaker 1: I've ever told you this story.
30:49
Speaker 2: It was probably two thousand and five or six seven,
30:52
Speaker 2: somewhere in there, and it was something to deal with
30:55
Speaker 2: Iraq or Afghanistan. And I was on I think it
30:58
Speaker 2: was Shepard Smith's show on Fox back in the day,
31:01
Speaker 2: and they asked me directly about Lindsey Graham and something
31:04
Speaker 2: he'd said. They played the soot come out of it,
31:06
Speaker 2: they asked me, and I was pretty blunt and I
31:09
Speaker 2: was like, I strongly disagree with him.
31:11
Speaker 1: YadA, YadA, YadA. I get done.
31:13
Speaker 2: And it was one of those you don't know it's
31:15
Speaker 2: coming moments, welcome to live TV. And so I gave
31:17
Speaker 2: my assessment. I get done, Centater within probably a minute.
31:23
Speaker 2: I was not out of the seat yet. My phone rings. Now,
31:26
Speaker 2: if you're twenty something, in your phone rings and it's
31:28
Speaker 2: a senator, like that's like it's you know, you answer right.
31:32
Speaker 2: So I answer it. It's two two number and it's
31:34
Speaker 2: Lindsey Graham. I don't know who he got my number from.
31:37
Speaker 2: And I answer and he starts just unloading on me,
31:41
Speaker 2: telling me why I'm wrong. But it was all a ruse.
31:44
Speaker 2: He was messing with me because he was down the
31:47
Speaker 2: hall in the green room at Fox, knowing he was
31:50
Speaker 2: gonna see me in twenty seconds. So I'm on the
31:53
Speaker 2: phone walking out of the studio and it's you know,
31:55
Speaker 2: the hallway there, it's a short hallway you go down
31:57
Speaker 2: make it's on the left, green rooms on the right,
31:59
Speaker 2: and I'm hearing the conversation in my ear delayed and
32:02
Speaker 2: I'm hearing his voice and I walk in and we
32:05
Speaker 2: never met before, like never had met before that moment,
32:08
Speaker 2: and I'm on the phone with him, and he looks
32:10
Speaker 2: at me and goes, gotcha, And.
32:12
Speaker 1: That was it, Like he didn't mind that was ripping
32:14
Speaker 1: on him.
32:15
Speaker 2: And I walked in there, we laughed and he talked
32:17
Speaker 2: to me for a minute, but he literally just wanted
32:19
Speaker 2: to mess with me. Like it was like the perfect
32:21
Speaker 2: you know joke there, and that's how he was. But
32:23
Speaker 2: like after that, it was hard. He was smart. It
32:26
Speaker 2: was harder for me to go after him on TV
32:29
Speaker 2: because I liked him personally.
32:31
Speaker 1: From that moment of him. He could have been a jerk,
32:34
Speaker 1: he wasn't.
32:35
Speaker 2: He saw the humor in the moment and was like,
32:37
Speaker 2: I'm gonna mess with this guy, and it was.
32:38
Speaker 1: It was a brilliant political move.
32:41
Speaker 3: And that's who Lindsay was. I don't know a single
32:46
Speaker 3: senator out of ninety nine other senators who didn't didn't
32:51
Speaker 3: like genuinely like Lindsay and consider him a friend like
32:55
Speaker 3: all of them. And it was a gift. And by
32:57
Speaker 3: the way, I've been in sent lunches, and we've talked
32:59
Speaker 3: about a lot of those senator lunches on this podcast,
33:01
Speaker 3: where things got raw and bare knuckles and on foreign policy. Look,
33:08
Speaker 3: Lindsey was an interventionist. He was an aggressive interventionist in
33:12
Speaker 3: the style of John McCain. He believed it, it was honest,
33:14
Speaker 3: but he was very much an interventionist. We've had lunches
33:18
Speaker 3: where Lindsey and Rand Paul would scream at each other
33:21
Speaker 3: and Lindsay. Rand is very much an isolationists Lindsay and
33:27
Speaker 3: by the way, I'm in the middle of both of them.
33:29
Speaker 3: I agree with with with with Lindsay about half the
33:32
Speaker 3: time and Rand about half the time. I've also been
33:34
Speaker 3: in lunches where Lindsay and JD Vance would be screaming
33:38
Speaker 3: at each other. JD Is is much more of an
33:41
Speaker 3: isolationist and disagreed with Lindsay. Like on Ukraine. I mean
33:45
Speaker 3: they would go at it where JD Vance wanted us
33:49
Speaker 3: to get the hell out of Ukraine yesterday, Lindsey was
33:52
Speaker 3: passionate on the other side, and they would slug it out.
33:54
Speaker 3: You know. JD put out a very kind and gracious
33:57
Speaker 3: tweet today actually telling that story. Say, look, you know
34:00
Speaker 3: Lindsay has yelled at me, but I respected him and
34:02
Speaker 3: he was my friend. And actually I saw a clip
34:05
Speaker 3: today that I've never seen before. So Blake Masters, Blake
34:10
Speaker 3: Masters ran for Senate in Arizona. I like Blake. I
34:13
Speaker 3: went and campaigned for him. He didn't win. I wish
34:16
Speaker 3: Blake had won, but he did not. Uh and uh,
34:19
Speaker 3: you know, Blake is is more on the isolation side
34:22
Speaker 3: of things. He's more with with Rand and JD. And
34:25
Speaker 3: on Ukraine, he was a vocal opponent of the Ukraine conflict.
34:28
Speaker 3: And it's interesting Lindsey went to campaign for Blake and
34:34
Speaker 3: and they asked him. Well, wait a second, you guys
34:36
Speaker 3: disagree on Ukraine. I want you to listen to to
34:39
Speaker 3: Lindsey's response as the he's there campaigning for a guy
34:43
Speaker 3: with whom he has sharp disagreements on foreign policy.
34:46
Speaker 4: Give a listen, remember my race, Remember Lindsey Graham dot com.
34:51
Speaker 4: Anybody watch Sean Hannity. So I was on Sean Hannity
34:55
Speaker 4: three nights a week, Blake saying they're gonna shoot my
34:59
Speaker 4: dog tomorrow at midnight.
35:01
Speaker 3: If you don't get me.
35:04
Speaker 4: I know you're living on cat food, but you can.
35:07
Speaker 4: You can spare a few bucks here. People responded, My
35:11
Speaker 4: opponent raised one hundred and thirty two million dollars against me,
35:15
Speaker 4: the most in the history of the Senate. Man Why
35:18
Speaker 4: across the cabin they hated my guts. They wanted to
35:21
Speaker 4: destroy the guy's life. I sort of got in the way.
35:25
Speaker 4: That's the way these people are, right, there's nothing they
35:28
Speaker 4: want to do for power. So the reason people responded
35:32
Speaker 4: to me is, you don't have to agree with me
35:34
Speaker 4: all the time, but when there's a fight, I will
35:36
Speaker 4: show up.
35:37
Speaker 1: He shows up. He's not lying when he says that.
35:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, And look, he would joke all the time, like
35:43
Speaker 3: when he was running for reelection the last time. He
35:45
Speaker 3: would go on on Hannity, to go on Fox News,
35:48
Speaker 3: and he'd say Lindsey Graham dot Comlinsy Graham dot Comlinsy
35:51
Speaker 3: Graham dot com. And he was shameless. I mean, he
35:53
Speaker 3: was like, Hi, my name is Lindsay Graham dot com.
35:55
Speaker 3: He would raise money and he'd say, he'd say, if
35:57
Speaker 3: you're a little old lady and you're trying to feed
35:59
Speaker 3: your cat, don't feed your cat tonight, go and give
36:01
Speaker 3: me money instead. And people would crack up, but they
36:04
Speaker 3: would do it. But so Blake masters who lost us
36:08
Speaker 3: that race. He tweeted out that video. But here's what
36:10
Speaker 3: he said in his tweet, which is interesting. Blake said,
36:13
Speaker 3: quote once when a donor asked Senator Graham, why are
36:19
Speaker 3: you helping Blake given how much you two disagree on
36:22
Speaker 3: foreign policy? He replied with a grin. So Blake's wrong
36:28
Speaker 3: about Ukraine. Who gives a shit. We aren't here to
36:32
Speaker 3: talk about how correct I am all the time. We're
36:35
Speaker 3: here to talk about getting the Senate majority because I
36:39
Speaker 3: want to be chairman of my committees. And Blake continues,
36:43
Speaker 3: Lindsey was cheerful and determined, and he understood that he
36:46
Speaker 3: played a team sport. May his memory be eternal. That's
36:51
Speaker 3: pure Lindsey Graham. He could disagree with you, and lord
36:54
Speaker 3: knows he and I did, but it wasn't personally wasn't
36:58
Speaker 3: angry with you, and and that sort of joy. Look,
37:03
Speaker 3: it is amazing the number of times you look at
37:05
Speaker 3: his relationship with Trump. Lindsay was a huge Trump critic. Yeah,
37:11
Speaker 3: and he ran against him, said he was going to
37:14
Speaker 3: destroy the world. But by the way, you look at me,
37:17
Speaker 3: all right, So in the presidential look, Lindsay ran against Trump,
37:19
Speaker 3: ran against me. And in the course of that campaign,
37:22
Speaker 3: Lindsay said, you know, if you killed Ted on the
37:27
Speaker 3: Senate floor and the Senate was the jury, nobody could
37:32
Speaker 3: convict you. I can admit that was funny as hell.
37:35
Speaker 3: I like laughed. I'm like, all right, that's a hell
37:37
Speaker 3: of a line. Now, Lindsay ended up not prevailing in
37:41
Speaker 3: that race. Obviously, he dropped out. And after Lindsay dropped out,
37:45
Speaker 3: he endorsed my campaign. So he came and endorsed my
37:47
Speaker 3: campaign and he campaigned with me for president twenty sixteen.
37:51
Speaker 3: And Lindsey said, at the time he and I were
37:53
Speaker 3: doing a fundraiser together and I stood up and I said,
37:57
Speaker 3: you know, I got to say, this is the first
37:58
Speaker 3: time in my life I've ever been endorsed by someone
38:02
Speaker 3: who's publicly called for my murder. And that was kind
38:08
Speaker 3: of how Lindsay was. He He had, you know, in
38:11
Speaker 3: the same time. You know, he and Trump would battle
38:13
Speaker 3: like crazy, but Trump just liked him and it was real,
38:18
Speaker 3: and Lindsey liked Trump. Lindsey saw the power. Look, Trump
38:24
Speaker 3: has a cast iron backbone, he has courage and and
38:28
Speaker 3: Lindsey saw the historic value of President Trump's strength and
38:36
Speaker 3: it was really important. Now, all right, I'll give you
38:38
Speaker 3: another story from from first term Trump. We were having
38:42
Speaker 3: a dispute about funding the border wall, and the President
38:45
Speaker 3: wanted to sign and was going to sign an emergency
38:48
Speaker 3: declaration and use the emergency powers of the president to
38:52
Speaker 3: shift funding to the border wall. I came up with
38:55
Speaker 3: a different legal theory that would let him build the
38:57
Speaker 3: border wall, let him build every penny of the border
38:59
Speaker 3: wall hundred percent, but not do it through an emergency declaration.
39:03
Speaker 3: And my concern was, look, if you create the precedent
39:06
Speaker 3: for doing this the next Democrat president, the next if
39:11
Speaker 3: we have a president Bernie Sanders or President Elizabeth Warren.
39:13
Speaker 3: They're going to declare an emergency on climate change, They're
39:16
Speaker 3: going declare an emergency on gun violence and use it
39:19
Speaker 3: to justify all sorts of bad policies. So I had
39:21
Speaker 3: a second theory that would have done one hundred percent
39:24
Speaker 3: of the upside without the downside of the bad president.
39:28
Speaker 3: And I pitched it to Lindsay, and Lindsay was like, yeah,
39:30
Speaker 3: that makes sense. And so Lindsey and I spent a
39:33
Speaker 3: day trying to call the President and pitch this theory.
39:38
Speaker 3: And at the time, the White House staff did not
39:41
Speaker 3: want Lindsay and me to talk to the president, so
39:43
Speaker 3: they were blocking us. They were preventing us from getting
39:45
Speaker 3: through to the president.
39:46
Speaker 1: The oldest trick in Washington is that one right there.
39:50
Speaker 3: And so we were sitting there, it was getting to
39:53
Speaker 3: be maybe seven seven thirty at night. We were on
39:56
Speaker 3: the Senate floor, and we were both frustrated because for
39:58
Speaker 3: twenty four hours we've been calling the president, we hadn't
40:01
Speaker 3: gotten through. And I finally said to Lindsay, screw it,
40:04
Speaker 3: Let's get in the car and drive over there. He's
40:06
Speaker 3: like what, and I'm like, yeah, let's just go over
40:08
Speaker 3: there right now. He's like, all right, let's go. And
40:10
Speaker 3: then oddly enough, a third senator jumped in the car,
40:13
Speaker 3: Ben Sass, who was another friend, but he was just
40:15
Speaker 3: kind of standing there, and Ben's like, oh, I'll go,
40:18
Speaker 3: And so the three of us drove over and we're
40:21
Speaker 3: literally we're not invited. We're uninvited, We're.
40:23
Speaker 1: Just you're not list.
40:24
Speaker 2: And by the way, people need to understand, there's two
40:26
Speaker 2: gates you go through and if you're not on the list,
40:28
Speaker 2: they look at you like you're an alien.
40:30
Speaker 3: Okay, So we're driving over and and Lindsey calls and
40:35
Speaker 3: actually gets Trump on the phone as we're driving over,
40:37
Speaker 3: and he's like, yeah, we're come over right now. And
40:40
Speaker 3: Trump was getting ready to have dinner with Milania and
40:44
Speaker 3: it was like their first like couple's dinner, a romatic
40:47
Speaker 3: dinner in like a month, and Lindsay's like, no, we
40:50
Speaker 3: need to see you right now. And so we go
40:53
Speaker 3: up to the residence and Trump is pissed. He is
40:57
Speaker 3: madder than a hornet because like his whole date night
41:00
Speaker 3: has been blown up by the by us going over
41:03
Speaker 3: to the White House. And so we come over there
41:05
Speaker 3: and we're up in the residence and and Trump brings
41:08
Speaker 3: up a couple of lawyers from the White House Counsel's
41:10
Speaker 3: office and and they're smart guys, but but they were
41:13
Speaker 3: on the other side of this, and we begin arguing.
41:16
Speaker 3: And I got to say, look, Lindsay could judge the
41:18
Speaker 3: prevailing wins really quickly, and and he could see that
41:21
Speaker 3: Trump was not buying what I was selling that particular night.
41:25
Speaker 3: So Lindsey very quickly abandons me. He just jumps out,
41:28
Speaker 3: and he goes and sits with with with with Trump.
41:30
Speaker 3: And I'm arguing with this lawyer from the White House Council.
41:33
Speaker 3: I mean, we are slugging it out. I mean, it's uh,
41:37
Speaker 3: it was a bare knuckle fight. And Lindsey turns to
41:41
Speaker 3: Trump and said, who do you think is winning? How
41:44
Speaker 3: they do it? And like Trump's kind of laughing, and
41:47
Speaker 3: they're almost like color commentators watching us have this legal argument.
41:52
Speaker 3: And then in the middle of it, Trump calls one
41:54
Speaker 3: of one of the staff of the White House and says,
41:56
Speaker 3: bring us some of those pigs in a blanket, those
41:58
Speaker 3: those those little orders. So they bring a plate of
42:01
Speaker 3: pigs in the banket and this goes on for like
42:05
Speaker 3: three hours.
42:06
Speaker 1: No, so you guys straight up Trump the date night.
42:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, it blew up the date night. We ended up
42:12
Speaker 3: not being persuasive that night, although I will say Lindsay
42:15
Speaker 3: cut me loose so fast and any job. But he didn't,
42:20
Speaker 3: like he admitted after he was like, yeah, you weren't winning,
42:23
Speaker 3: So I wasn't gonna be with that. He's like, I'll
42:24
Speaker 3: be behind you, way way way behind.
42:26
Speaker 1: You, right behind you. Yeah, around the corner.
42:29
Speaker 3: But it was the sort of thing that's that was
42:33
Speaker 3: very much Lindsey Graham, and it's part of why Trump
42:37
Speaker 3: listened to him, because he didn't win every argument, but
42:40
Speaker 3: he was there to go again and to go again,
42:42
Speaker 3: and it was really effective. And I'll tell you where
42:46
Speaker 3: it mattered enormously. There's no area Lindsay and I worked
42:50
Speaker 3: more closely on than Iran and standing up to the
42:56
Speaker 3: incredible danger to America if the Ayatola ever gets a
43:00
Speaker 3: nuclear weapon. I think it's an existential threat to America.
43:03
Speaker 3: I think if the Ayatola who chanced death to America
43:06
Speaker 3: gets a nuclear weapon, I think the odds are unacceptably
43:10
Speaker 3: high that that hundreds of thousands, or even millions of
43:13
Speaker 3: Americans would be murdered. And Lindsay agreed with that, and
43:16
Speaker 3: he and I worked hanned in hand over and over
43:20
Speaker 3: and over again, talking with President Trump every week, sometimes
43:24
Speaker 3: every day, saying you're exactly right to stand up to Iran.
43:29
Speaker 3: The President has said repeatedly, Iran will never get a
43:31
Speaker 3: nuclear weapon. There will be zero enrichment. And Lindsey was
43:35
Speaker 3: an incredible ally. Uh that that that I've was fighting alongside,
43:40
Speaker 3: and the President listened to us, which is part of
43:43
Speaker 3: why we've seen seen the President's incredible strong leadership taking
43:50
Speaker 3: out Iran's military capacity and stopping them from getting nuclear weapons.
43:54
Speaker 3: That that that was one of the most important legacies
43:57
Speaker 3: Lindsay ever had.
43:58
Speaker 2: It's it's really incredible. We're gonna do something really fun
44:00
Speaker 2: this week as well. That first podcast that you did
44:04
Speaker 2: with your first guest was Lindsey Graham. We are going
44:06
Speaker 2: to put that out this week, so look for that
44:09
Speaker 2: on the feed as well. Senator I I I'm so
44:11
Speaker 2: glad you got to talk about your friend. I mean
44:13
Speaker 2: this so sincerely, I'm so sorry for your loss. When
44:16
Speaker 2: you lose a friend, I've lost too many you lose them,
44:19
Speaker 2: especially a sudden like this, it is gut wrenching. Uh.
44:22
Speaker 2: Hug your hug your family. Hug your friends, call your friends,
44:25
Speaker 2: check on your friends. I say that often to people
44:28
Speaker 2: you just never know. Uh and and and uh, I'm
44:31
Speaker 2: glad you got to spend so much quality time with him.
44:34
Speaker 3: Well, he will be missed. He left a legacy that
44:38
Speaker 3: that that was extraordinary. And I will say, whether you
44:43
Speaker 3: agreed with him or disagreed with him, Lindsey loved this
44:48
Speaker 3: country and and he devoted every waking moment of his
44:52
Speaker 3: life to fighting for this country. That that was his mission.
44:56
Speaker 3: And I admired that. I I admired that it was real,
44:59
Speaker 3: it was ja you and and he made a profound difference.
45:04
Speaker 3: It is a good reminder Lindsay was just seventy one
45:06
Speaker 3: years old. He was full of energy and vigor. To
45:09
Speaker 3: be honest, if I were to pick one of my
45:11
Speaker 3: colleagues who was not going to be making not gonna
45:15
Speaker 3: make it, Lindsey would not have been on the list.
45:17
Speaker 3: He had the energy that that he was unstoppable at energy.
45:23
Speaker 3: And it's a good remindered all of us that that
45:26
Speaker 3: that none of us are guaranteed to be here tomorrow.
45:28
Speaker 3: So so hug your family, hug your kids, and and
45:33
Speaker 3: say thanks to God for the for the privilege of
45:35
Speaker 3: living in a time of consequence and and and making
45:38
Speaker 3: a difference in our country. And I will say this,
45:41
Speaker 3: Lindsey Graham made an enormous difference for our country.
45:44
Speaker 2: Amen to that, Senator Cruz. And I will see you
45:47
Speaker 2: back here in a couple of days. We'll put out
45:48
Speaker 2: that podcast with Lindsay Graham as well, so you can
45:52
Speaker 2: if you missed it, you can hear it or you
45:53
Speaker 2: can watch it.
45:54
Speaker 1: Uh and uh.
45:55
Speaker 2: And to Lindsey Graham's family friends were thinking about them
45:59
Speaker 2: as well. God bless you guys, and we'll see you
46:01
Speaker 2: back here in a couple of days.