A Senate Republican added further detail to the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s, R-S.C., final moments thanks to an unlikely connection.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., revealed that it was a former member of his staff that called for medical assistance to aid Graham, who died suddenly over the weekend just after his return from an overseas trip.
“My former scheduler was Lindsey’s scheduler, and one of my staff members was with that scheduler the night Lindsey called,” Tuberville told reporters. “He called [and] basically said, ‘Listen, I’m having chest pains. You know, I need to do something.’ ‘Did you call 911?’ And he goes, ‘No, that’s the reason I called you.’”
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“And so she called 911… By the time she got there, 911 had knocked the door down, and they were working on him,” he continued.
A preliminary cause of death was revealed Sunday evening. His office said the longtime lawmaker had died from “aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.”
Aortic dissection is when a tear occurs in the inner wall of the aorta, the body’s main artery, and is a life-threatening medical emergency.
“Lindsey basically worked himself to death, most of us have families, he didn’t have any family,” Tuberville said. “And if we had a couple of days off, he went to that airport, and he went somewhere to try to work out something for our country.”
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Axios reported that in one of Graham’s final conversations, he told an unnamed source that he was feeling unwell but wanted to wait until after his scheduled appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to seek medical attention.
“I can’t die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization,” Graham said.
His death has rocked the Senate, where emotional tributes rolled in throughout the day on Monday, the upper chamber’s first day back in Washington, D.C., since recessing for the Fourth of July.
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Graham’s desk in the Senate, which is where the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., his close friend, once sat, was draped with a black veil and a glass bowl of sharp white roses atop it.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., in an emotional tribute to the late lawmaker, said the “halls of the Senate already feel empty without him.”
“I am comforted by the knowledge that, in the end, he has just changed his address. And that one day, Mr. President,” Thune said through tears. “We will laugh together again.”
Graham will be succeeded, temporarily, by his sister, Darline Graham Nordone. She is slated to be sworn in to the position on Tuesday after being tapped by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to fill in for her late brother.
“I think this is what Lindsey would have wanted, and I plan to honor him in this way,” Nordone said during the ceremony in Columbia, South Carolina. “Now to Lindsey, I miss you more than I can even put into words. But I’m going to do this, I got it.”
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