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New details have emerged about Sen. Lindsey Graham’s final moments, with a fellow Republican senator revealing that Graham called one of his staff members Saturday night to report severe chest pains and ask for help just before his sudden death.

Speaking to reporters Monday, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) recounted what he learned from members of his own staff, shedding new light on Graham’s final hours after the South Carolina senator returned from a trip to Ukraine and prepared to resume work following Congress’ post-Independence Day recess despite not feeling well.

“My former scheduler was Lindsey’s scheduler, and one of my staff members was with that scheduler the night Lindsey called,” Tuberville said, explaining that the two aides had been watching a World Cup soccer match together at a restaurant in the Washington area.

According to Tuberville, Graham reached out seeking assistance after experiencing alarming symptoms. “Lindsey called [and] basically said, ‘Listen, I’m having chest pains. You know, I need to do something,’” the former college football coach recounted. “[She said,] ‘Did you call 911?’ And he goes, ‘No, that’s reason I called you.’ And so she called 911 … By the time she got there, 911 had knocked the door down, and they were working on him.”

Efforts to reach Graham’s scheduler for comment were unsuccessful.

Previously released emergency dispatch recordings indicate that paramedics were sent to Graham’s Capitol Hill townhouse at approximately 8:30 p.m. Saturday. Shortly before 9:00 p.m., first responders reported that CPR was underway and that a man inside the residence was suffering cardiac arrest.

A nearby resident later shared photographs showing an elderly man being wheeled from Graham’s home on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance at approximately 9:30 p.m.

Graham’s office publicly announced his death shortly after 2:00 a.m. Sunday. A preliminary report issued by the District of Columbia medical examiner concluded that he died from an aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Axios reported Monday that Graham had also told another individual on Saturday night that he was not feeling well but intended to see a physician after his scheduled Sunday morning appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.

According to that report, Graham joked, “I can’t die now. I still need to do the Russia sanctions, get Iran sorted out and do Israeli-Saudi normalization.”

President Trump, who appeared on Meet the Press in Graham’s place, confirmed that he had spoken with the senator earlier that evening.

“He sounded a little tired, but perfect, but a little bit tired,” Trump said. “He had a right to be. Man, he was a worker. He was really a worker. But he sounded great actually. But he actually said he was tired.”

As senators returned to Capitol Hill on Monday still grappling with the news, Tuberville reflected on Graham’s relentless work ethic, saying the longtime lawmaker may have pushed himself too hard.

“Most of us have families,” the Alabama Republican said. “He didn’t have any family, and if we had a couple of days off, he went to that airport. He went somewhere to try to work out something for our country.”

{Matzav.com}

President Donald Trump said that understandings reached with Iran through Pakistan on June 17 were “sort of a test,” adding that Tehran “didn’t honor the test.”

“It was built to test. We didn’t know,” Trump said in a phone interview with the Salem News Channel.

“Look, memorandums of understanding when you’re dealing with sleazebags don’t mean much,” the president continued. “They don’t mean much when you’re dealing with honorable people too, because it’s a memorandum of understanding—it doesn’t mean much.”

“You know, it’s a standard tactic in the U.S. that you go to a memorandum of understanding and then you go to the deal,” said Trump. “I said, just go to the deal first. But you know what, it was sort of a test, and they weren’t there.”

Trump said Iran “never followed it.”

“These people are crazy,” he told the outlet.

To the Iranian regime, “deals are made to be broken,” Trump continued. He added, “They are extremely unreliable people—and, frankly, if they ever had a nuclear weapon they’d use it within one day.”

Trump ordered more strikes against Iranian regime sites on Monday in response to the Islamic Republic’s attacks on civilian-manned commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

The president also told Fox News that the United States would be “taking over” the strategic shipping lane.

“We’re taking over the strait. They [the leaders of the Iranian regime] have nothing,” Trump said in a phone interview.

“Yesterday, they had an 11-hour meeting. Everything’s 11 hours with these guys,” the president continued. “Everything was agreed to yesterday. And they leave the room, and they call back, and they say, ‘We had to make a couple of changes.’ I said, ‘Changes? They’re going to make changes? We’re not going to make changes.’

“For 47 years, they’ve been tapping presidents along. Every president got tapped along, didn’t do anything, and they became more and more powerful. This should have been done 47 years ago. It shouldn’t have been allowed to start,” Trump said. JNS

{Matzav.com}