Graham's Joke to Friend: 'I Can't Die Now'

One of the more jarring stories about the days and hours preceding Sen. Lindsey Graham's sudden death on Saturday night comes from Axios. The piece quotes an unnamed person who urged the 71-year-old to seek medical attention on Saturday after Graham complained he wasn't feeling well. Graham promised to do so—but only after his Meet the Press appearance on Sunday morning. "I can't die now," Graham joked, according to the piece. "I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out, and do Israeli-Saudi normalization." He died hours later.

Graham had just returned from a working trip to Ukraine, and he briefed President Trump about it during a phone call on Saturday. "Other than being tired, he was fine," Trump told Meet the Press on Sunday, per the New York Times. Referring to initial reports that Graham suffered cardiac arrest, Trump added: "And so it had to be something like that, that would just be a quick end. And maybe that's not the worst way to go." (Graham's office has said that an aortic tear appears to be the cause.)

In the weeks before his death, the South Carolina Republican had been working on multiple foreign policy initiatives. One big one was a push to reestablish formal ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, part of a post-Iran-war settlement in the Middle East, per Axios. And on his visit to Ukraine Friday, Graham revealed a bipartisan deal among senators to impose new sanctions on Russia. All seemed well: "Graham delivered the announcement under the blazing sun, but he appeared unbothered by the heat and sounded clear and concise," recounts the Washington Post.