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Good morning,

Any minute now my daughter will wake up and come bounding into this room to tell me the Tooth Fairy paid her a visit last night, after she parted ways with her first baby tooth yesterday. Mr. and Mrs. Tooth Fairy couldn't agree on the going rate for a tooth these days. I suggested it should be pegged to the age of the child, so $5. She thought it should be $1, which sounds a little cheap if you ask me. A buck? In this economy? CPI is running at 4%! We settled on $2 before realizing neither of us had any cash, so now the munchkin is about to wake up to a 100 Euro banknote under her pillow. Thankfully, her understanding of currency valuations is limited at best.

Speaking of children who don’t know how money works, it’s shaping up to be a busy day of foreign policy in Washington. Later today, lawmakers and other DC creatures will make their way to National Cathedral, where the memorial service for Lindsey Graham will take place. President Trump is among those scheduled to eulogize his friend, with both Benjamin Netanyahu and Vlodomyr Zelensky jetting into town to pay their respects to a man who supported their war efforts when many others did not.

It's not a coincidence that as they arrive, the wars in Iran and Russia are becoming more intertwined. Ukraine just hit supply lines in the Caspian Sea that connect Russia and Iran, with at least one Iranian casualty (a sailor on a commercial ship who was a non-combatant, according to Iran). Ukraine says it was targeting legitimate Russian military assets. Regardless, technically speaking Ukraine is now a belligerent in the US-Israeli war against Iran. That seems... sub-optimal.

Don't get me wrong, Zelensky's got plenty of legit beef with Iran, as it is Iranian-made drones that Russia has been lobbing at his men on the frontlines for four years now. And we know Moscow has been supplying Tehran with intelligence during this conflict, so you could argue Russia already is a shadow belligerent in the Iran war.

But Ukraine is really pushing the envelope now if Zelensky is authorizing long-range drone strikes on Iranian targets. Has anyone asked Trump why Zelensky seems interested in entering this war? Doesn’t he have his hands full? Or is it possible he sees this as his last/best chance to drag the US/NATO into fighting Russia? Zelensky is the second coming of Jesus in the Western media so we aren't allowed to ask questions about his motivations, which are always nothing but pure. But don't forget, the Biden admin used to talk about how Zelensky was trying to suck us into fighting the Russians on his behalf, and they resisted.

Am I the only person who finds this all a bit disturbing? Was anyone else paying attention in high school when we learned about great powers and how world wars start? Did anyone in any of these administrations read The Guns of August?! Nobody seems too concerned that we're approaching an omni-war here, with Israel-US-Ukraine acting as one against an axis of Iran-Russia (and maybe) China. Sorry not sorry that I don't trust the combination of Zelensky and Netanyahu in a room with the deeply impressionable Trump today. 

It's kinda ironic this is all happening at the funeral for the guy who would be cheering on the beginning of WW3 if only he were here to witness it. I wonder what Graham would think of Bibi and Zelensky using his funeral as cover to convince Trump to merge their two wars into one. He'd respect the hustle, for sure. One thing that has been made clear in his death is that Lindsey Graham really, really liked war. He lived and breathed it. Has everyone seen the footage from the documentary that Graham was participating in right up until he passed? The filmmaker Alex Holder had been following the senator around for three years, getting incredible behind-the-scenes access to his conversations with Trump, Bibi and others. The footage that's starting to come out from that project is some twisted stuff.

Here's Graham talking about how he "almost cried" with joy when Trump started the bombing campaign against Iran in February. "How long have we been pushing this?" he says to the filmmakers.

Here's Graham in March predicting the Iranians would begin losing control of their cities within "three to four weeks" and that greater Arab involvement would create "almost irreversible momentum." Five months in, not a single Iranian city has fallen and that "greater Arab involvement" is nowhere to be found.

Here's Graham trying to convince Trump to get involved in Israel's bombing campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon and being talked out of it by Netanyahu himself. When even Bibi is telling you your bloodlust is getting to be a bit much, you might have a problem!

So that's how Lindsey Graham should be remembered today. When he died unexpectedly earlier this month, I went out of my way not to overly criticize him as I find it in poor taste to even appear like you're dancing on the grave of the recently deceased. But now that he's being dead for a couple weeks and today is all about remembering the man for who he was, I'll use my small platform to do just that. Lindsey Graham was a deeply delusional warmonger who, like many of his fellow Bush-era neocons, has been proven wrong and wrong and wrong again, about everything. My country was worse off when he was alive, and my family is ultimately safer with him no longer around to influence American foreign policy. Good riddance.

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Carlo Versano is Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture. He has in-depth knowledge and experience covering a range of topics and stories over a 20-year career in the news business. Carlo joined Newsweek in 2024 after a stint at The Messenger. Before that, he was an Emmy-winning producer at NBC News. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the New School. You can get in touch with Carlo by emailing [email protected].

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On this episode of The 1600, Carlo sits down with Georgetown professor Dr. Charles King to explore the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. They discuss what modern America can learn from Ancient Rome, examining its culture, political institutions, and the challenges facing democracy.

Watch the latest episode here. ⬅

By Alice Gibbs

Senator Mitch McConnell's office on Monday released a new photograph showing the Kentucky Republican seated beside his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, alongside a medical update stating that he remains in an inpatient rehabilitation facility more than a month after suffering a fall at his home.

The image—the second released since McConnell's June hospitalization—appears intended to reassure supporters about the 84-year-old senator's condition.

But it also leaves key questions unanswered.

On Monday, I headed to Capitol Hill to ask senators about President Donald Trump’s call for Senate Republicans to stay in Washington until the Save America Act passes, or to eliminate the filibuster.

Trump wrote: “John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER.”

GOP Sen. Katie Britt told me, “I am happy to stay as long as it takes to get our job done. I believe we need to pass Save America.”

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin offered a different view, saying, “Senator Thune has taken consideration what the votes are, what the whips are, Republicans, and Democrats. The president is not.”

Watch both interactions in full here.

This weekend Brazil's Foreign Ministry denied visas to two U.S. State Department officials who'd planned to fly down and lecture the country on election integrity, a gesture a Brazilian source diplomatically filed under "risk of political exploitation."

Translation: thanks, but Brazil already has a coup attempt on file, it doesn't need a second opinion.

Flávio Bolsonaro, running to inherit his father's cell and his father's campaign, made the pilgrimage to Washington in May. Trump rewarded the visit with tariffs of up to 37.5 percent on Brazilian exports, presumably filed under "helping." Brazilians responded by doing the one thing tariffs reliably produce, which is resent the tariffing country: Lula surged to 45 percent against Flávio's 37 percent in a runoff poll, and even the Bolsonaro camp admitted the tariffs were "strengthening Lula's support."

Nothing unites a nation quite like a foreign president explaining, uninvited, how to fix it. And in Brazil, every tariff is a campaign donation to Lula.

Shortly after 9/11, the architect of the most lethal terror attack on American soil coined a phrase that far outlived him: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."

That sentence, uttered by Osama bin Laden in a November 2001 recording, has been used countless times to explain power dynamics in the Middle East, arguing that power and strength command respect and support, while weakness loses them.

Perhaps the same observation could be made to explain why some of the MAGA movement's staunchest critics of American support for Ukraine's defense against Russia have suddenly displayed a very public change of heart.

“I talked to Trump this morning, he’s jacked, he said, ‘best thing I have ever done.’ He loves blowing stuff up.”

— The late Lindsey Graham on the first day of the war with Iran, as seen in newly released documentary footage.

Newsweek is part of the Trust Project, which focuses on honesty, accuracy and fairness in journalism. Read more about our best practices. To get in touch with our newsroom with suggestions on how to point out possible errors, please contact us at [email protected].