Steve Schmidt is a political strategist who worked for the campaigns of Republicans such as George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and John McCain.

Disgusted by Trump, he was one of the founders of the Lincoln project, an organization of anti-Trump Republicans. He left the Republican Party in 2018. In December 2020, he switched his party registration to Democratic. He writes one of the most popular blogs on Substack.

He wrote about Lindsey Graham on his Substack blog The Warning:

Lindsey Graham was a lonely and unprincipled man who betrayed his country for power and his decency for attention.

Let it be known for all time that he knew exactly what Donald Trump was from the very beginning, and chose him over his country:

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”

“I believe Donald Trump would be an absolute, utter disaster for the Republican Party, destroy conservatism as we know it.”

“We would get wiped out and it would take generations to overcome a Trump candidacy.”

“Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee of the Republican party. If he is, that’s the end of the Republican Party.”

“Trump is an interloper and a demagogue of the greatest proportion.”

When Donald Trump attacked America, and tried to burn down the republic built by Washington, saved by Lincoln and redeemed by King, he was aided by Lindsey Graham who supported the lies, dismissed the insanity and sought personal gain from it all.

Lindsey Graham was a pathetic man, a true cynic and a faithless servant of the Constitution.

He was a simple man to understand and a tragic one. He lacked a moral core and any sense of right and wrong. The great empty spaces of his life were filled with an insatiable need for “relevance.” He found it as a cast member in the most malignant reality show ever made.

Let there be no confusion about what Lindsey Graham was. There was no complexity to the man, nor much in the way to plumb and analyze about his journey to the bottom of the Trump sewer.

Lindsey Graham lived his life as a pilot fish, a parasitic sucker fish hovering about larger predators. He was a sidekick and the hollowest of hollow men. Here is what I once shared with Rolling Stone:

“People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now. The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power — but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.”

Let there never be any confusion over the choice Lindsey Graham made.

He chose Trump over his friend.

He chose Trump over his country.

He chose Trump over his duty.

He chose Trump over his oath.

Now he’s dead, and Trump is his rotten legacy — and in that, he won’t be alone.

In the end he made an adjudicated rapist laugh and played a lot of golf with him.

He was a warmonger and the architect of a lost war against Iran.

Lindsey Graham helped Trump divide America and break our alliances, ideals and traditions.

He was no patriot.

Lindsey Graham made his choice.

The high court of history will pass a brutal judgement about a man who knew better, but chose worse.

I won’t mourn Lindsey Graham’s death, but rather the country he helped break.

He was a most contemptible man.