Lindsey Graham died on July 11, and Washington is burying him today with all the pomp a 30-year Senate career can buy. But if you're wondering why both Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy flew in for the occasion, the answer has very little to do with grief.
A Funeral With a Very Full Diplomatic Agenda
The memorial runs across two venues. According to The Guardian, Graham will first be honored with a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda, then his remains will be transported to Washington National Cathedral for a 2:00pm funeral service where Donald Trump is scheduled to deliver a tribute. After that, Graham heads home to South Carolina for a second service on Wednesday.
It is, by any measure, a fitting send-off for a man who spent decades at the center of American foreign policy. Graham served in the Senate for over two decades, logged at least ten trips to Ukraine after Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv the day before he died, and was actively pushing a Senate bill to tighten sanctions on Russia when his heart gave out. Whatever you thought of his politics, the man was not phoning it in.
But Washington being Washington, the funeral has already become something else entirely.
What Zelenskyy Actually Wants From This Trip
A senior Ukrainian official told AFP that Zelenskyy is coming to Washington with a very specific shopping list: fresh supplies of anti-ballistic missiles and a serious conversation about restarting frozen peace talks with Russia. The Guardian reports those are the two items Zelenskyy plans to push when he meets Trump, who is scheduled to see both foreign leaders on the same day as the funeral.
That meeting matters more than it might look. US policy toward Ukraine is, as The Guardian puts it, in a state of flux right now. The Trump administration has been running hot and cold on Kyiv since taking office, and whatever signals come out of today's meeting will reverberate far beyond the cathedral steps. Zelenskyy knows that. He also knew Graham, who visited Ukraine more than almost any other American official and died still fighting for the country in the Senate. If there was ever a moment to press the case, today is it.
And Then There's Netanyahu
Benjamin Netanyahu is also in attendance, also meeting Trump, also at a moment when US policy toward his region is murky and contested. Graham was one of Israel's most reliable defenders in Congress, loudly backing Israeli military operations even as international bodies and human rights organizations documented what is now widely characterized as a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Graham also applauded Trump's decision to strike Iranian nuclear sites and supported the war against Iran that the US launched alongside Israel in late February. That war is ongoing. Netanyahu showing up to the funeral of one of Israel's most enthusiastic American cheerleaders, at a moment when the Iran conflict's next chapter remains unwritten, is not a coincidence. This is diplomatic positioning with a black dress code.
Who Was Lindsey Graham, Really
Look, Lindsey Graham was a complicated figure and history will argue about him for a long time. He was a reliable hawk who cheered on George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and destabilized an entire region. He backed Israeli military campaigns when the death tolls in Gaza climbed into the tens of thousands. He was, at various points, a Trump critic who became a Trump loyalist in ways that struck a lot of observers as a man choosing survival over principle.
But he was also, genuinely, a senator who showed up. He went to Kyiv ten times. He was there the day before he died, pushing legislation that had real consequences for real people fighting a real war. Whether you agree with his foreign policy worldview or find it catastrophic, he engaged with the world in ways that a lot of politicians simply do not. That part is worth saying clearly before the eulogies turn him into a saint.
The Rotunda, the Cathedral, and the Livestream
For anyone who wants to watch, both the Capitol Rotunda ceremony and the National Cathedral service are available via livestream, according to The Guardian. The South Carolina service on Wednesday will follow.
The optics of today are genuinely strange. A funeral that is also a NATO lobbying event, attended by two wartime leaders who both need something from the man giving the eulogy. Graham spent his career at the intersection of American military power and global conflict, and even his memorial service can't escape that gravity.
The Dingo Take
Here is the thing about covering a funeral like this: you have to hold two true things at once. Lindsey Graham was a hawk whose foreign policy positions contributed to enormous suffering, and he was also someone who took his job seriously enough to die coming home from a war zone he visited voluntarily for the tenth time. Washington doesn't produce a lot of those. The tributes today will probably skip the Iraq War part. That's how these things go.
What shouldn't get lost in the pageantry is what's actually happening. Two foreign leaders showed up to a dead senator's funeral specifically to lobby the American president for weapons and policy commitments while the cameras are rolling and the mood is solemn. That is the world Graham spent his career building, and it is now operating exactly as designed, with or without him.
Trump will give a speech. Netanyahu and Zelenskyy will smile for photos. Graham's remains will fly home to South Carolina. And somewhere in the meetings that happen between the ceremony and the cathedral, decisions will get made that determine how many more people die in Ukraine and the Middle East. The funeral is the backdrop. The deals are the point.
