South Carolina’s senior senator Lindsey Graham has died at 71.
His office states he died Saturday of a “brief and sudden illness.”
Emergency personnel responded to a call for “cardiac arrest” at Graham’s Capitol Hill home on Saturday night, according to police scanner audio obtained by NBC News. EMS audio later indicated CPR was in progress.
Photographs from the scene reviewed by NBC News show paramedics carrying a person on a stretcher from Graham’s home to an awaiting ambulance. Police cars and fire trucks were also on site.
A top staffer noted there was no indication Graham was feeling unwell prior to his death.
“You know how you make America great again?” Mr. Graham said in a 2015 CNN interview: “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
In February during an NBC interview, he called himself Donald Trump’s “North Star.”
Graham had been scheduled to appear on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday, following a recent trip to Ukraine.
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Graham was first elected to Congress in 1994 before becoming a Senator in 2002.
Graham served a total of 33 years in the Air Force, Air Force Reserve and South Carolina Air National Guard, fulfilling reserve duties while in Congress, retiring at Colonel in 2015.