On July 13, 2015, my Washington Post colleague Michael Gerson and I interviewed Senator Lindsey Graham about his long-shot and, as it turned out, not terribly long-lasting Presidential campaign. The day before, on CNN, the South Carolina Republican had unloaded on Donald Trump, who had glided down the golden escalator at Trump Tower the previous month to launch his own, seemingly improbable, Presidential bid. Other Republican contenders, perhaps wary of Trump’s growing appeal among voters, had been restrained in their criticism of the real-estate developer. Graham was unsparing. Trump, he said, was a “wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party” and a “demagogue.” Trump’s depiction of undocumented immigrants as rapists and murderers, Graham said, was a “defining moment for the Republican Party.” He added, “If we do not reject this way of thinking clearly, without any ambiguity, we’ll have lost our way.”

When I asked Graham why he thought Trump’s message was catching on, he situated Trump within the same populist mode as the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who had entered the Democratic Presidential race. “There’s a market, always, for this kind of stuff,” Graham told me. Still, he predicted of Trump, “At the end of the day, his growth potential is not great. He’s probably hit where he’s going to go.” It was nonetheless important to counter Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, Graham said, not least because the Party was alienating such a significant chunk of the electorate. “I will not be part of this,” he told me. “I will not be part of this as a Presidential candidate, as a United States senator. I know better, and I have an obligation to speak up.” The disdain was mutual. Trump dismissed Graham as a “lightweight” and an “idiot.” He read Graham’s private cellphone number at a rally in South Carolina, much to the delight of the crowd.