Trump ally Lindsey Graham survives challenge from GOP's anti-establishment wing
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., squeaked out a win Tuesday night in a crowded primary race for the Republican nomination in the Palmetto State.
Though there were six candidates, the contest truly fell between Graham and businessman Mark Lynch. Their primary battle again brought forth the ongoing feud within the GOP, pitting Trump-aligned candidates against the edges of the president’s own MAGA movement.
Graham is running for a fifth term in the upper chamber and is fresh off successfully advancing the GOP’s $70 billion immigration enforcement package. He’s now headed to the general election in November, where he’ll face off against Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, who survived a three-way primary contest in South Carolina on Tuesday.
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He is also one of President Donald Trump's most ardent allies in the Senate and was endorsed by the president early last year.
Meanwhile, Lynch was recently endorsed by Trump’s former National Counterterrorism Center director, Joe Kent.
"He is the America First candidate," Kent said in an endorsement video on X. "He's gonna keep us out of all these foreign wars, and he is the best postured right now to get the warhawk neocon Lindsey Graham out of office."
Lynch also called for "more MTGs, Gaetzes and Massies" in Congress, referring to former Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and one of Trump’s biggest critics in the GOP, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
Both Greene and Massie have evolved into some of the most vocal critics of Trump and the administration. Massie, however, was felled last month in a hotly-contested primary race in Kentucky by a Trump-backed candidate.
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That alignment saw Trump go after Lynch on Truth Social, where he called on Palmetto State voters to buck him for Graham.
"Senator Lindsey Graham is doing a fantastic job," Trump said. "He is running against a LUNATIC named Mark Lynch, who supports perhaps the Worst Congressman in the History of our Country, Thomas Massie, of the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky."
"I don’t have to go into great detail, but needless to say, Mark Lynch would be a DISASTER for the Republican Party, and Lindsey Graham just, GETS THE JOB DONE," he continued. "VOTE FOR LINDSEY ALL THE WAY. MAGA!"