Lindsey Graham admits friendship with Biden is over, blaming Afghanistan

Senator Lindsey Graham has consigned any hope of repairing his years-long friendship with President Joe Biden to the dustbin, purportedly because of the president’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan.

Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, Mr Graham called the president — with whom he served in the US senate for six years — a “decent man,” but said he “will never forgive him” for executing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan that was required under an agreement negotiated under former president Donald Trump.

“He has blood on his hands, and he’s made America less safe, and he’s been the most consistently wrong man on foreign policy in my lifetime,” Mr Graham said.

The South Carolina Republican, who was once known as one of the senate’s most bipartisan members but has increasingly toed whatever line has been drawn for him by Mr Trump in recent years, claimed that Mr Biden’s decision to honour the agreement made by the prior administration will result in a future terrorist attack upon the United States, but did not cite any sources to back up his claim.

Prior to his refashioning of himself into one of Mr Trump’s most reliable allies, Mr Graham and Mr Biden were known to be friendly despite their political differences. In a 2016 interview, Mr Graham called the president “”the nicest person I think I’ve ever met in politics” and “as good a man as God ever created”.

But whatever friendship existed between the two broke down during the 2020 election, after Mr Graham called for investigations into Mr Biden’s son Hunter over baseless allegations of foreign corruption that figured prominently in Mr Trump’s first impeachment trial.

At the time, Mr Biden said Mr Graham’s conduct had been a “personal disappointment” because he had considered him a friend.

According to The New York Times, Mr Graham called Mr Biden after the election to attempt to smooth over things between them, but was rebuked by his former colleague.

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