The Lindsey Graham Conspiracy Theories Are Already Running Wild
Here’s why I don’t think they’ll stick.
A PROMINENT 71-YEAR-OLD can’t just die of cardiovascular disease these days. Instead, judging by some people’s reactions to the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), there has to be a hidden hand at play.
“Was Lindsey Graham assassinated by Russia or Iran?” asked right-wing activist Laura Loomer, adding that Vladimir Putin–friendly American podcaster Tucker Carlson should be investigated by the FBI just to be sure.
“Lindsey Graham dying out of the blue like this doesn’t make any sense at all,” wrote conservative activist Matt Van Swol, in a message reposted by former Trump spokesman Sean Spicer.
And on it went. Conservative columnist Marc Thiessen suggested that Graham, who recently visited Ukraine, might be just the latest Putin foe to fall victim to an assassination. (Graham apparently died of an aortic dissection, and Thiessen was commenting on a post noting that “Graham has dealt with blood pressure issues since his 40s. His father also died of cardiac arrest at age 69.”) Former CBS News reporter-turned-conspiracy theorist Lara Logan, meanwhile, is dabbling in numerology, scrutinizing the timing of Donald Trump’s posts about Graham’s death to see if they hold clues.
“This doesn’t look like a guy who would die hours later,” commented billionaire Bill Ackman on a video of a not-particularly-healthy-looking Graham. Ackman—who, like the other people quoted above, is not a physician—later deleted the tweet.
The rush to avoid the obvious explanation for Graham’s death—that Graham died of heart disease, as 71-year-old men with busy schedules sometimes do—offers a glimpse into the dynamics of the MAGA internet in 2026. It’s a place where nothing is as it seems, and even something as simple as an older man dying is grist for the conspiracy theory mill.
Studying conspiracy theorists, academic Michael Barkun noted that one core tenet is their belief that nothing that happens is a coincidence. So Graham can’t just die randomly in a way that more or less fits with his actuarial table—he had to have been killed by a secret team of Russian assassins waiting around in Kyiv for an American senator to show up, or by opponents of the SAVE Act, or because he once was vaccinated for COVID.
What’s different now is that