Here’s How Lindsey Graham Manipulated Trump Against Putin

Andrew Korybko

It all started by tricking Trump into thinking that Ukraine has trillions of dollars’ worth of rare earths

RT published two critical pieces about Lindsey Graham, “World War mastermind: Here’s America’s most dangerous person” and “Graham threatens Putin: US war hawk escalates rhetoric in alignment with military lobby”, shortly after Trump announced his new three-pronged approach to Ukraine. This analysis here earlier mentioned how Graham was one of those responsible for manipulating Trump against Putin, while the present one will elaborate on how that came to be given the prominent role that he played.

Graham is the defense industry’s darling whom they’ve generously donated to over the years as documented by Yahoo Finance, The Intercept, and Sputnik, et al. Forbes also reported on the donations that he’s received from over a dozen billionaires. The first group donates to him since they have facilities in his state of South Carolina while the second does so since they’ve invested in those companies. Graham is suspected of investing in them too in what’s since become a toxic symbiotic relationship.

He warmongers against states like Russia to justify more defense spending, the defense companies that donated to him get more state contracts, and he in turn profits from rising stock prices, and on and on. Although Trump is his political ally, his campaign pledge to end the Ukrainian Conflict threatened to hit Graham’s bottom line if he returned to office and made good on it, hence why he scrambled to stop him. This explains why he suddenly started talking about Ukraine’s rare earth minerals in summer 2024.

He first claimed that they’re worth $10-12 trillion, repeated their “more than a trillion dollars-worth” after visiting Kiev that August, and then declared in late November after the election that “Donald Trump is going to do a deal to get our money back, to enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals.” bne Intellinews and The Telegraph, among others, doubted the value of Ukraine’s rare earths. Nevertheless, an amended deal was agreed to in spring, which was predicted to lead to more US arms packages.

Once Trump was tricked by Graham into thinking that Ukraine possessed trillions of dollars’ worth of rare earth minerals, including under Russian-controlled soil that Kiev claims as its own, the defense industry’s darling got to work duping Trump into thinking that Putin was “tapping [him] along” during their talks. Graham is one of Trump’s most outspoken allies and they’re also golf buddies so he obtained his trust that was then exploited to manipulate him against Putin in order to derail the “New Détente”.

A swift peace with Russia without a proxy war or at least a crisis with China shortly thereafter would have raised questions about the Pentagon’s largest-ever $1 trillion budget that Graham championed at the behest of his defense industry donors with whom he has a toxic symbiotic relationship. By furthering their shared taxpayer-funded financial interests, Graham not only got Trump to escalate US involvement in the conflict, but also to threaten up to 100% tariffs against Russia’s trading partners within 50 days.

Both are betrayals of his base since escalation could embroil the US in another forever war like MAGA thought leader Steve Bannon warned in January, not to mention risk World War III by miscalculation, while 100% tariffs on China could greatly harm US consumers if they last. Graham could care less though since more conflict with Russia and tensions with China are profitable for him. His close friend John McCain at least truly believed in his warmongering while Graham just does it for self-enrichment. 

Andrew Korybko, Substack, 23 July

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