Everything He Ever Wanted

High level government jobs are attractive to serial killers. Lindsey Graham was one.

The extraordinary exchange was captured by the documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who was granted extensive access to Graham since 2023. It provides an unvarnished look at Graham’s yearslong quest to topple the Iranian regime and the ways in which he persuaded Trump to strike, at times pushing for even more aggressive action than Netanyahu was prepared to take.

WSJ’s Josh Dawsey reviewed the documentary footage, filmed before Graham’s death. Here is what he learned. Photo: Caroline Gutman for WSJ

“Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried,” he tells the crew, laughing loudly just after U.S. strikes on Iran began in February. “How long have we been pushing this?”

He then tells the crew that Trump was equally happy about the war. “I talked to Trump this morning, he’s jacked, he said, ‘best thing I have ever done.’ He loves blowing stuff up.”

He was always funny and friendly to me, personally, in the Senate, so who is to say if he was good or bad?