The Washington Post asks "why is Lindsey Graham acting like this?"
The answer is actually fairly simple.
According to Graham, he decided to cozy up to Trump because Trump needs a babysister who will tell him that what he's seeing on Fox News isn't real.
Graham recalls a specific anecdote in which Trump mistakenly believed that footage he saw on Fox News may be real-time footage of a possible attack from North Korea.
Shortly after Trump was elected, he invited Graham to the White House for a chat. They ate lunch with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, beside a flat-screen television tuned to Fox News.
Graham said the president had wanted to get his thoughts on national security, the subject that Graham considers his specialty. So, he told the president his two biggest concerns were Iran and North Korea, at which point, the television started showing archived footage of North Korean missile launches. The president, Graham said, worried that this was happening in real time.
“That’s old footage, old footage!” Graham said he told him, laughing now at the memory.
Ha! Get it? Because the man with access to the nuclear football can't tell that what he's seeing on Fox News isn't live.
Graham also told the Post that he has taken point on defending Brett Kavanaugh because he was afraid Trump would literally nominate Judge Judy or some other TV lawyer from Fox News.
I'd say these are all well-founded concerns, but Graham isn't containing Trump's nincompoopery so much as he's enabling him. Moreover, enabling Trump means enabling the larger forces behind him. Support for Trump is support for institutional racism and misogyny.
None of this makes Graham one of the good guys, but he sure thinks it does.