'This is the party of Donald Trump': Lindsey Graham says Bill Cassidy lost his primary because he 'tried to destroy' the president

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that Sen. Bill Cassidy lost his Louisiana primary because the Republican senator "tried to destroy" President Trump, and warned that any GOP lawmaker who crosses Trump can expect the same fate.

"Those who try to destroy Trump politically, stand in the way of his agenda, are gonna lose," Graham told NBC News. "Bill Cassidy lost because he tried to destroy Trump. This is the party of Donald Trump."

Cassidy, a two-term senator and physician, was knocked out of his own primary Saturday by Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming, both of whom advanced to a June 27 runoff. Letlow finished with about 45% of the vote, Fleming with 28% and Cassidy with roughly 25%, according to the Associated Press. He becomes the first sitting U.S. senator to lose a primary since 2017.

Trump, who endorsed Letlow in January and spent months publicly trashing Cassidy as "disloyal," celebrated the result on Truth Social Saturday night: "It's nice to see that his political career is OVER!"

Graham, asked on NBC whether he was glad to be losing Cassidy as a colleague, said no. "I like Bill. I thought he was a great senator, but he made a political decision," he said, pointing to Cassidy's 2021 vote to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial. Graham also predicted Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who has clashed with Trump, would lose his own primary Tuesday.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, Massie said his own polling and fundraising tell a different story than the one Graham is selling. "You can tell that I'm ahead in the polls and they're desperate," Massie told host George Stephanopoulos, pointing to "tens of thousands of donors" and "millions of dollars" flowing in from the grassroots.

Cassidy, for his part, went out swinging.

In his concession speech Saturday night in Baton Rouge, he threw an unmistakable elbow at the president who'd spent years working to end his career.

"When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn't turn out the way you want it to," Cassidy told supporters, according to NBC News correspondent Sahil Kapur. "But you don't pout. You don't whine. You don't claim the election was stolen."

Graham himself once looked like he might be the next Cassidy.

In the hours after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, the South Carolina senator took to the Senate floor and appeared to declare his long alliance with Trump over. "Trump and I, we've had a hell of a journey," he said that night. "All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough."

The break didn't last. Within weeks Graham was back at Mar-a-Lago golfing with Trump, and he spent the next several years rebuilding himself into one of the president's most reliable defenders on Capitol Hill and on cable news.

By that summer, Graham was already walking back what the country thought it had heard. "That was taken as, 'I'm out, count me out,' that somehow, you know, that I'm done with the president," he told The New York Times in August 2021. "No! What I was trying to say to my colleagues and to the country was, 'This process has come to a conclusion.'"