Is Lindsey Graham coming around to Donald Trump?
One-time presidential candidate and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham recently had a "cordial, pleasant" phone call with the presumptive GOP nominee.
"We had a good fifteen minute discussion centered on the national security threats facing the United States," Graham said in a statement Thursday. "I gave him my assessment about where we stand in the fight against ISIL and the long-term danger posed by the Iranian nuclear deal. He asked good questions."
The phone call, which took place Wednesday, was "arranged by a mutual friend" of the two Republicans, according to Graham's communications director, Kevin Bishop.
But the South Carolina senator said he would continue to remain neutral in the 2016 election, declaring that "my position remains the same regarding both candidates running for President."
"I will do what I can in the Senate to help the next president," he added. "The next president will inherit a mess."
Of Trump's recent attempts to outreach to establishment Republican legislators on Capitol Hill, Graham called it "a wise move on his part."
Graham's kind words for Trump are a departure from his general stance on the presumptive nominee. Earlier this month, he trashed Trump's foreign policy strategy as a danger to national security. He told CBS' "Face the Nation" that a Trump presidency would "lead to another 9/11."
"There's a civil war going on in the Republican Party, obviously. John and I are very close friends, but he's embracing Donald Trump, and I am not," Graham said, referring to former House Speaker John Boehner's recent comments seemingly supporting Trump. "Why? Because I believe Donald Trump's foreign policy is isolationism. It will lead to another 9/11."
The South Carolina Republican, whose tense history with the presumptive nominee once led Trump to mockingly give out Graham's cell phone number (and it was his real number) at a campaign rally, made those statements just days before Texas Sen. Ted Cruz dropped out of the White House race. Graham had endorsed Cruz in March.