Washington prepares to eulogize Sen. Lindsey Graham with Trump attending

Washington honored Sen. Lindsey Graham on Tuesday with a memorial service at the U.S. Capitol and a funeral at the Washington National Cathedral, where Donald Trump was expected to attend and deliver remarks. The farewell was the center of a two-state sequence that was also scheduled to send Graham back to South Carolina for a state Capitol ceremony, a church service and a private burial.

Graham died on July 11 at age 71, his office said, from a brief and sudden illness. Preliminary medical findings later indicated that he died from a tear in his main artery caused by hardened arteries. In the days after his death, Trump called Graham “one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known,” and later said there was no foul play in the senator’s death.

The guest list underscored why Graham’s memorial drew far beyond the usual circle of Senate colleagues. Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy were reported among the attendees in Washington, a sign of the Republican’s unusual reach with foreign leaders and in national security debates that shaped much of his Senate career. Condolences after his death came from congressional colleagues across party lines as well as from world leaders, reflecting a political network Graham built over decades in Washington.

The son of pool hall owners, Graham rose to become one of the more influential politicians in the United States and one of South Carolina’s defining figures in the Senate. The planned sequence in Washington and then at the South Carolina State Capitol tied his national profile to his home state, with the cathedral service placing him among the rare lawmakers whose funeral drew both a president and senior foreign officials. The gathering made clear that Graham’s influence reached well beyond ceremony, into the Republican Party’s foreign-policy wing and the institutional politics of the Senate itself.