President Donald Trump has weighed in on the burgeoning MAGA theories surrounding the shock death of Republican Lindsey Graham.
The South Carolina senator died suddenly on Saturday night, aged 71, the day after he returned from a trip to Ukraine, where was photographed meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Washington, D.C. Medical Examiner’s office found in a preliminary examination that the South Carolina senator died from “Aortic Dissection due to Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease,” according to his office.
However some MAGA figures have cited suspicions over the timing of Graham’s travel and unexpected death, including regular conspiracy theorist and Trump ally Laura Loomer.
“Was he poisoned by a foreign adversary either abroad or upon returning to the US?” Loomer wrote on X, before calling for an investigation into his death.
She added, “What do his staff mean by a `brief and sudden illness’? Poison?”
On Monday, Republican Senator John Cornyn also fueled the speculation.
“I saw the initial diagnosis of a dissected aorta — which is terrible, I mean, obviously, that could cause his death — but given where he was and the sorts of things he was advocating for, I think we just ought to resolve all those questions by seeing what the toxicology reports show,” Cornyn told reporters on Monday, per CNN.
When asked if he was concerned Graham was poisoned, Cornyn said, “I’m just saying he needs a toxicology test to rule out any foul play.”
President Trump phoned into NewsMax’s Greg Kelly Reports on Monday, where the host said he had seen images of Graham returning from Ukraine, claiming, “he didn’t look so hot.”
Kelly added, “I’m told by those who know him, maybe he looked a little off and he was tired. But look, the Russians, they have a habit of poisoning people they don’t like, and Lindsey Graham once called for Putin to be taken out.”
His lengthy question finally ended by asking Trump, “Do you have any suspicions or worries, do you think we know the whole story about his death?”
Trump deflected, saying “Well, I think we do.”
The president continued, “We’ve had great doctors and they talked about... a certain part of his body literally blew up and that’s a condition I believe his father had also. His father died very, very young from heart complications and that’s what Lindsey had.”
F.J. Graham died after suffering a heart attack in his sleep, aged 69.
Trump then claimed the senator had “like a seventy percent blockage” of his arteries.
“I said ‘Lindsey, you’re going to have to go to take care of that’,” the president said. “But this was not that problem, this was a different problem, that wasn’t really related.”
After referencing being one of the last people Graham spoke to before he died, Trump circled back “to answer the conspiracy theory.”
He said, “I’d love to say yes, but I think he had some problems... His father died just about at the same age... I’m a believer in the racehorse theory, you know, if you have problems, you have problems.”
Trump added, “He had some problems that were a little bit deep-seated and not easy to find.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Graham’s office for comment.
Trump has previously created controversy over referencing the “racehorse theory” and its links to eugenics. He said in 2020, “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory.”
Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville revealed on Monday that one of his staffers was with Graham’s scheduler on Saturday evening when the late senator called the scheduler after experiencing chest pains, and asked her to call emergency services.
“Lindsey called, called basically, said, ‘Listen, I’m having chest pains. You know, I need to do something,’” Tuberville said. When the scheduler asked Graham if he had called 911, the senator said “No, that’s the reason I called you.”
Praising Graham, Tuberville said, “Lindsey basically worked himself to death. Most of us have family, he didn’t have any family. If we had a couple of days off, he went to that airport and he went somewhere to try and work something out for our country.”
