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The Ballad of Rand & Lindsey

The changing definition of “America First” has exploded tensions between two senators at opposite ends of the conservative foreign policy spectrum: the libertarian Rand Paul and the interventionist Lindsey Graham. If Paul won the ideological battle in the first term, Graham seems to have Trump’s ear in the second.

Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham
Naturally, Paul blames Graham for Trump’s evolution into an interventionist. “There should be a law that Lindsey Graham can only go to the White House every other week, and that he’s only allowed to meet with midlevel people and not the president,” Paul said this week. Photo: Allison Bailey/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images
Leigh Ann Caldwell
January 11, 2026

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Following the stunning operation to capture Nicolás Maduro, tensions on Capitol Hill have erupted as Republicans debate what “America First” really means in Trump’s second term. At the opposite poles of the argument are two senators who mostly despised one another to begin with: Rand Paul, the anti-interventionist libertarian, and Lindsey Graham, a champion of American aggression and imperialism who’s never met a war he didn’t like. As it happens, their views also represent the vastness of Trump’s foreign policy evolution in his second term.