Lindsey Graham was so full of life – when plotting the deaths of others

According to unreleased footage from a documentary about the South Carolina Republican lawmaker that was being filmed before he died earlier this month, Sen. Lindsey Graham planned to travel to Florida in early March to persuade POSOTUS to Lebanon on Israel’s behalf — until Benjamin Netanyahu said no. Threatening Hezbullah is one thing; but actually bombing them in concert with the US in the midst of the Iran war could open up a second front, the war criminal pointed out.

“We’re concentrating right now on Iran,” Netanyahu said on the March 4 call. “If we tell Hezbollah that we’re going all the way, we threaten them, but if we actually do it, then they have no reason not to go all the way against us. And right now that’s not our interest,” he said on speakerphone.

The phonecall was captured by the documentary filmmaker Alex Holder, who had been granted extensive access to Graham since 2023. It provides an unvarnished look at Ladybugs’ 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.

He was like the weedy little shit in high school that starts yelling “Fight! fight! fight!” at every argument, hoping to see someone’s nose get bloodied, while never himself having the courage to risk an altercation with someone who might swing back at him.

“Look what we’ve done here. I almost cried,” Ladybugs 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.”

The footage shows the documentary crew regularly traveling with Graham, sitting in the back seat and filming as he takes phone calls from the front seat. Graham let the crew stay in the room for sensitive meetings, and some of the people Graham spoke with by phone told the Journal they didn’t know the calls were being recorded.