On Offense with Kris Goldsmith
Jul 15, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min · 13 segments
Lindsey Graham’s death has me thinking about the choices that define a political legacy. As someone who spent years lobbying Congress on behalf of veterans, I saw firsthand the difference between…
Reid GalenGuestChris GoldsmithHostIt was after he dropped out of the Republican presidential primary that Donald Trump ultimately won.
I took a photo with him, not because I liked him, but because I had a feeling that one day it might matter.
But I was only able to get that photo because I caught him on the street leaving an event.
I had spent years trying to get an actual meeting with Lindsey Graham through his office, but that never happened.
As a veteran advocate, first on my own and later representing Vietnam Veterans of America, one of the nation's largest congressionally chartered veteran service organizations, I spent years trying to persuade members of Congress to support reforms that would protect the men and women they were sending to war.
I even got Senator John McCain to become the lead Republican sponsor of my very first bill, the Military Mental Health Review Board Improvement Act.
Now, Senator McCain and I disagreed on a lot of things that were extremely important to me.
We disagreed about allowing predatory for-profit colleges to exploit veterans' GI Bill benefits, all things that matter tremendously to me.
But he would listen, he would engage, and he could be persuaded on things that really did matter.
The human stories, the evidence, the suffering that he could help to stop, none of that seemed to matter to Senator Graham.
People are going to spend a lot of time saying that Lindsey Graham was a great supporter of the troops, but that's not true.
It was after he dropped out of the Republican presidential primary that Donald Trump ultimately won.
I took a photo with him, not because I liked him, but because I had a feeling that one day it might matter.
But I was only able to get that photo because I caught him on the street leaving an event.
I had spent years trying to get an actual meeting with Lindsey Graham through his office, but that never happened.
As a veteran advocate, first on my own and later representing Vietnam Veterans of America, one of the nation's largest congressionally chartered veteran service organizations, I spent years trying to persuade members of Congress to support reforms that would protect the men and women they were sending to war.
I even got Senator John McCain to become the lead Republican sponsor of my very first bill, the Military Mental Health Review Board Improvement Act.
Now, Senator McCain and I disagreed on a lot of things that were extremely important to me.
We disagreed about allowing predatory for-profit colleges to exploit veterans' GI Bill benefits, all things that matter tremendously to me.
But he would listen, he would engage, and he could be persuaded on things that really did matter.
The human stories, the evidence, the suffering that he could help to stop, none of that seemed to matter to Senator Graham.
People are going to spend a lot of time saying that Lindsey Graham was a great supporter of the troops, but that's not true.
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