Former President Trump said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) “kisses my ass” in order to snag endorsements for his friends, according to a forthcoming book from New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman.
“You know why Lindsey kisses my ass? So I’ll endorse his friends,” Trump said in the excerpt published Sunday in The Atlantic.
The quip comes from one of three interviews Haberman conducted with the former president after he left the White House.
Trump reportedly complained to Haberman, a White House correspondent throughout his administration, that Graham and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had encouraged the former president not to endorse a challenger to Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial after being reelected with Trump’s endorsement.
Graham has long been a key Capitol Hill ally of the former president, but their relationship has been tested.
The two have sparred over policy in the past, and Graham’s ties to Trump put him under the spotlight of a Georgia special grand jury investigating efforts by the former president and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.
Last year, Graham joked that that the pair’s working relationship functions due to the “common ground” that “he likes him, and I’ve come to like him.”
Graham has backed Trump in his outrage over last month’s FBI search of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence, where agents recovered over 100 classified documents taken from the White House.
The South Carolina senator warned of “riots in the streets” if Trump is prosecuted for mishandling the documents.
Haberman’s book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America” is slated for publication next month.
The Hill has reached out to Graham’s office for comment.