Goldtent TA Paradise

Sen. Lindsey Graham dies at 71 after ‘brief and sudden illness’

1. Marcusjames says:

   July 12, 2026 - 8:00 am at 8:00 am

   Bye.

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2. Fullgoldcrown says:

   July 12, 2026 - 8:34 am at 8:34 am

   This moment is resurfacing of Sen. Lindsey Graham, becoming electric and furious in favor of Brett Kavanaugh — Trump’s 2018 SCOTUS appointee — when Democrats ran a shocking witch hunt against him

   This moment is credited with “resuscitating” Kavanaugh’s nomination

   “You want to destroy this guy’s life and hold his seat open! […] [Kavanaugh’s] got nothing to apologize for! [I] would never do to them what you’ve done to this guy! This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.”

   https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2076272039191584901

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3. pedro_deleon says:

   July 12, 2026 - 9:34 am at 9:34 am

   Yeah, one moment of upside.
   But otherwise, good riddance.

   So now perhaps I spend Sept, Oct and Nov in (upstate) SC.
   It was already a thought.

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4. Fullgoldcrown says:

   July 12, 2026 - 10:21 am at 10:21 am

   JEFF CHILDERS ON THE POLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS AND THE INCREASING MAGAFICATION OF THE REPUBLICAN SENATE

   You really can’t make this stuff up. In a single pre-election month, two GOP Senators succumb to mystery illnesses, and a new dimension stacks onto the political chessboard. Bonus subscriber post.

   Good morning, loyal C&C supporters, it’s Sunday! Your author is blogging and packing, since I leave for the airport soon, headed for Fulton County. (On lawyer business, not elections. But I’ll keep my eyes open for loose ballots.) Today’s quick post rounds up double trouble: two sitting U.S. Senators who’ve both fallen off the political chessboard, in the same month— both with sudden, undisclosed illnesses, both with seats open in the November elections, and both with potentially vast political implications. Let’s dig in.

   Long-time readers will remember the two-year period when I used to run a celebrity SADS story nearly every day. Commenters used to argue over whether my red ‘X’s’ were disrespectful, hilarious, or just plain accurate. But it’s been so long, my euphemisms are dusty. So I’ll just tell you. Last night, the New York Times reported, “Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, Dies at 71.” It was sudden. And absolutely unexpected.

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   Lindsay Graham was single, never married, and had no kids. So his obituary coverage had little to discuss beyond the politics. But we can do a little better than the Times.

   Lindsay Olin Graham was born poor in South Carolina in 1955. He was the first in his family to attend college. He joined the Air Force and became a JAG lawyer, for a combined Air Force-National Guard career spanning 33 years (overlapping his Congressional service). He dipped his toe into politics as an assistant county attorney (1988). Shortly thereafter, he won a seat in the South Carolina house (1992), and was promoted two years later to the U.S. House, as a Newt Gingrich conservative. In 2003, he shifted Congressional wings, moving into retiring Strom Thurmond’s Senate offices, where the upholstery still smelled of hair pomade and Dixiecrats.

   Politically speaking, Graham was peak neocon. The Times called him “one of the Senate’s most forceful advocates for an interventionist U.S. foreign policy,” which is a polite euphemism for “a man who never met a foreign country he didn’t want to immediately bomb, occupy, or deploy USAID’s color revolution team to.” After supporting Project Ukraine harder than most Democrats, Graham suddenly and unexpectedly became one of Trump’s most loyal and effective Senate assets during Trump 2.0—an abrupt switch that remains unexplained to this day, though I suspect it involved Trump holding some kind of Ace Card. You tell me.

   “Once one of Mr. Trump’s sharpest Republican critics during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Graham later underwent a political transformation,” the Times remembered, “becoming one of the president’s most steadfast and outspoken allies.” Before and after his never-Trump days, Graham occasionally became a GOP superstar. His rousing and often furious defense of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was historic. Not to mention that, for another instance, as Senate Majority Chair, “Graham was instrumental in advancing President Trump’s effort to reshape the federal judiciary.” That’s the Times’s description.

   And we must never forget how Graham “was a key figure in the 2016 fight over President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the court, aiding in Republicans’ success in blocking the pick.”

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   We really dodged a bullet that time. Can you imagine Justice Garland? He would have declared the Constitution a right-wing extremist manifesto by his second Tuesday on the bench. Thank you, Lindsay.

   In 2022, after his “political transformation,” Graham opposed Mitch McConnell for Majority Leader and backed Rick Scott instead. He was an original co-sponsor of the first SAVE Act in the Senate and was its chief salesman there. As Budget Chair, Graham tried to bolt the Save Act’s provisions into budget reconciliation bills. He once said he would like to vote on it “every week until the election” to drive home the differences between Republicans and Democrats.

   ? Media is reporting Graham’s cause of death only as a brief and sudden illness— the classic covid-era euphemism. Died suddenly. SADS! Which was extremely common 2021-2023, but in 2026, is very strange for a major U.S. political figure. He hasn’t been sick, at least not recently, unless you count an obsessive addiction to CNN green rooms.

   Intrepid online researchers quickly claimed that, based on publicly available EMS radio traffic, Graham may have been in cardiac arrest. I confirmed most of the details in a Washington Post story. It would mark another weird coincidence:

   image 6.png
   The days when any sudden cardiac death was almost certainly related to a jab injury are, mercifully, past us now. But, since they invoked the classic formula, it’s worth noting the classic formula: died unexpectedly, at home, no warning, with media lying and calling a one-shot heart attack a “brief illness.” Very brief. So I will replay his jab history.

   Graham got his first shot in April, 2021. He enthusiastically recommended the jabs. A few months later, in August, Senator Lindsey Graham became the first senator to disclose a breakthrough infection despite being vaccinated. He said he was “very glad” he received the vaccine, without which his symptoms would be “far worse.” Uh huh. Without the jabs, he might have died five years ago instead of definitely dying last night.

   His constituents didn’t share his jab enthusiasm. Headline, Boston Globe, 2021:

   image 2.png

   Graham was a keen political operator. He might’ve heard the message. Thus, on the brighter side, Senator Graham consistently, vocally, and legislatively opposed Biden’s jab mandates. I could not find any reports of Graham getting boosted. So maybe he wasn’t a really big jab fan after all.

   ? It is pretty weird that the GOP is losing two members of the old guard right before the 2026 midterms, from both wings of the non-MAGA Republican party. As we’ll discuss more shortly, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also shares the spotlight, since he has become Schrödinger’s Senator. (Just like Schrödinger’s Ayatollah. No joke. This is getting ridiculously commonplace. At this rate, we’re going to need a quantum physicist just to take roll call in the Senate.)

   Under the rules, South Carolina’s Republican Governor, Henry McMaster, will appoint Graham’s temporary replacement. A GOP nominee will then run in November against Democrat Annie Andrews. Graham’s death has triggered a warp-speed primary, so Republicans in South Carolina will soon choose who will run to replace him on the 2026 ticket.

   Hopefully, folks will contrast the South Carolina process —holding a real primary— with what is happening to Democrat voters in Maine, where party bosses will just pick the candidate to replace Nazi-memorabilia collector Graham Platner in a smoke-filled back room after sacrificing a goat to the pagan gods of “Democracy.™”

   Governor McMaster is a Trump ally and will almost certainly appoint a Trump-friendly temporary Senator. I couldn’t find anyone yet handicapping who might run in the snap primary. It’s still early. But if McMaster is smart (and he is), he’ll appoint someone who is also running for the open seat, giving that person a head start, free media, and probably a giant stack of campaign cash.

   So, it looks like Team Trump will capture Graham’s Senate seat, too. Now, let’s examine Senate Mystery Number Two: the Rise and Fall of the Turtle.

   ? Yesterday, the UK Guardian ran a story the Times still refuses to cover below the headline, “Mitch McConnell mystery deepens as health questions remain unanswered.” A mystery wrapped in a riddle! The dramatic subheadline correctly added, “Senator’s office has released only sparse details about hospital stay, leaving fevered speculation to fill vacuum.” Very fevered.

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   “Mystery surrounding Senator Mitch McConnell’s health is deepening,” the story said with eye-watering understatement. Um. Frankly, this is getting ridiculous. The former GOP Majority Leader, 84, has not been publicly seen or heard from since he was suddenly and unexpectedly admitted to the hospital with no disclosed diagnosis a month ago. He is currently providing all the dynamic leadership of a child’s wind-up shelled reptile.

   The Kentucky Republican’s office keeps releasing sparse updates, saying he is “continuing to improve”—setting a land speed record for tortoises— and remains ‘fully engaged’ with Senate business, but stubbornly refuses to disclose the nature of his illness or explain why he remains hospitalized despite continually improving. (Maybe he has improved so much that he has entirely transcended human form and is now a being of pure, legislative energy.)

   A long, tiresome list of politically connected insiders —including, remarkably, CNN’s Scott Jennings— has claimed to have spoken with McConnell for sessions between 20 and 45 minutes at a time. (I’m guessing McConnell spent most of the time listening; but I’m just speculating with everyone else. Or maybe Jennings was just talking to a very realistic animatronic river cooter.)

   The whole thing is downright silly. The public is being asked to accept, on faith, that an 84?year?old senator who has not been seen or heard for nearly a month is simultaneously well enough to “work from the hospital” and yet also too medically fragile for anyone to say why he’s there or predict when he’ll return. It’s the political equivalent of “my girlfriend lives in Canada, you wouldn’t know her.”

   Unsurprisngly, there’s a reason. If McConnell dies or resigns due to incapacity, then Kentucky’s Democrat governor, Andy Beshear, gets to appoint his replacement.

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   Thankfully, state law requires that the appointee be drawn from a list submitted by the departing senator’s party. So you’d still get a Republican, but which Republican becomes a huge, bloody, political knife fight.

   As long as we keep the hospital box closed, McConnell remains technically alive, technically in office, and technically “continuously improving.” As long as that indeterminate status holds, Republicans needn’t fight over his successor— either in Kentucky or in the marbled halls of power in DC.

   Meanwhile, McConnell has already announced he is not seeking an eighth term. So the 2026 Kentucky Senate race is an open?seat contest between Republican Andy Barr versus Democrat Charles Booker.

   image 9.png

   Ironically, Democrats have to keep their big fat mouths shut, which must hurt like the Dickens. They can’t complain, since they concealed stroke victim John Fetterman in the hospital and then inpatient care for ‘depression and post?stroke complications’ for months at a time in 2023, while insisting he was still 100% fit to serve, working from his hospital bed, and using carefully staged appearances and letters from doctors to calm concerns.

   Whenever Republicans questioned Fetterman’s capacity or demanded more detail, Democrats and most corporate media framed it as discriminatory ableism and bad faith, not as any kind of legitimate transparency issue about a sitting senator. After all, expecting a United States Senator to be able to form a coherent sentence is a hate crime.

   And that’s without even getting into the whole “sharp as a tack” thing. Good times.

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   ? If McConnell somehow finishes out his term, the November winner —presumably Andy Barr, who is strongly favored to win— simply takes office as usual in January 2027. But if McConnell dies or resigns before then, Kentucky’s 2024 succession law kicks in: a special election must fill the vacancy.

   But there’s a practical cutoff, around August 3rd, for calling a special election in time to coincide with this November’s ballot. If McConnell can keep the EEG beeping till after that date, the seat could then sit peacefully empty until November, or even longer, depending on how the timing interacts with various filing deadlines.

   Fortune Magazine, two days ago:

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   In short, it’s to Republicans’ political advantage to keep McConnell in Schrödinger’s lead-lined box and out of a coffin for as long as possible. If they can stretch it out to the first week of August, less than three weeks away, the GOP can minimize the political carnage.

   Other intriguing possibilities appear. Late yesterday, conservative law professor and influencer Jonathan Turley tweeted, “This is where the rubber meets the road.” With McConnell out for health reasons, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) assumes temporary control of the Rules Committee. When the Senate returns from holiday tomorrow, Senator Cruz will enjoy options for advancing the SAVE Act— which McConnell had opposed.

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   Will Cruz move promptly and decisively, reversing McConnell’s decisions in his absence? We shall soon see.

   ? Kentucky hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992, and nonpartisan handicappers rate the 2026 Kentucky Senate race as Solid Republican, with Trump-endorsed Andy Barr as the likely next senator— barring a political earthquake.

   We don’t need any earthquakes.

   While it’s perfectly natural for conservative influencers to demand answers, especially after the Biden catastrophe, conservatives’ natural demands only help Democrats, who’ve been sidelined by their own Fetterman gamesmanship and can’t realistically complain.

   Carefully consider the conspicuous absence of complaints from President Trump.

   Admittedly, the whole thing is downright weird. In this year’s midterms, Republicans are defending 22 Senate seats. In two of those races, in a single month, the incumbent has effectively vanished into a medical fog. And yet, U.S. corporate media remains surprisingly restrained. I had to reach to the UK to find a headline mentioning the ‘mystery’ of McConnell’s condition.

   GOP Senator Lindsey Graham died of a ‘brief and sudden’ illness, with no diagnosis. GOP Senator Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized since June 14th with an “unspecified” condition his staff will not describe, even generally, while repeatedly assuring the public that he “continues to improve” from an ailment they refuse to name.

   It may be an actuarial coincidence that nearly 10 percent of the GOP’s defending senators have winked out under euphemism in the same month, just before midterms. But it’s not a coincidence that both seats —Graham’s and McConnell’s— will now likely be filled by younger MAGA candidates.

   What can I tell you, except to say that I told you this election cycle would be remarkable and historic. Can we say yet whether my prediction was correct? If not, that’s fine. We’ll get there.

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5. pedro_deleon says:

   July 12, 2026 - 12:06 pm at 12:06 pm

   https://x.com/LibertyLockPod/status/2076212055875477747

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