First on LateNighter: Lindsey Graham spent decades giving late-night hosts material. He nearly tried delivering some himself.
The South Carolina senator, who died suddenly last weekend of an aortic dissection at age 71, was once tentatively booked to perform a stand-up set on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon—a plan that was abandoned before it made it to air and never publicly reported until now.
Graham occupied an unusual place in the late-night comedy universe. He was both a frequent target of hosts and, on occasion, a willing participant.
His role in that world changed along with his politics. Graham first burnished his public persona as the Southern-drawling member of a bipartisan trio that also included John McCain and Joe Lieberman—a foreign-policy hawk who could be combative on Sunday mornings but also displayed a flair for self-deprecation.
During the 2016 Republican primary, he became an exasperated Donald Trump critic, memorably calling his future ally a “jackass.” Once Trump took power, Graham’s transformation into one of the president’s most fervent defenders supplied late-night hosts with years of material.
But before that transformation was complete, The Tonight Show briefly considered letting Graham take the stage himself.
Former Tonight Show writer Jon Rineman tells LateNighter that Graham was tentatively booked to perform stand-up after ending his unsuccessful campaign for president. Rineman had nearly forgotten the plan, but after checking his old emails this week, he confirmed that the proposed bit had advanced far enough for staff to draft material around it.
The idea took shape after Graham dropped out of the 2016 Republican primary. This was still the version of Graham who delighted in mocking Trump. He had earned a reputation on the campaign trail for being unusually quick with a joke—at least by senatorial standards—and willing to poke fun at himself.
The Tonight Show staff thought he might be funny enough to try the real thing.
“One day, [head writer A.D.] Miles came in and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to have Lindsey Graham do stand-up on the show,’” Rineman recalls.
Fallon would play the premise completely straight, introducing Graham like an unknown comic getting his first network break.
“Our next guest is an up-and-coming comedian from South Carolina,” the planned introduction began. “Making his Tonight Show debut, please welcome Lindsey Graham.”
Graham would then walk onstage carrying a cocktail—a nod to his campaign-trail jokes about everyone needing to have a drink and relax—and deliver a short set roasting his former rivals for the Republican nomination.
Among the rough jokes Rineman found in a 2016 email:
“Give yourselves a great big hand! Now in honor of Donald Trump, give yourselves a teeny-tiny hand.”
“I’m gonna be out here for about five minutes. Or as Jeb Bush calls that, ‘a presidential campaign.’”
“And how about that Chris Christie, hangin’ around with Trump? I haven’t seen him act like THIS much of a ‘yes man’ since a waiter asked if he wanted to hear the specials!”
“I’m not particularly proud of them,” Rineman says, looking back at his proposed jokes.
Graham never got the chance to deliver them. The bit was abandoned before it reached the air—not, surprisingly, because the senator or his political advisers got cold feet, but because The Tonight Show ultimately decided against it.
Rineman no longer remembers exactly why Graham’s invitation was withdrawn. He suspects the show’s increasingly uneasy relationship with electoral politics may have played a role. Fallon generally tried to avoid staking out an overtly partisan identity, and the risks of inviting a politician to participate in a comedy showcase were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
“It’s one of those things,” Rineman says. “That’s the tightrope you walk when you have a politician do something, especially if in later years they become more divisive.”
Graham went on to make multiple appearances across late night, with guest appearances on The Daily Show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. But he never did make it to Fallon’s Tonight Show.
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