Lindsey Graham's aide of 27 years reveals the secret 'love language' behind his unlikely Trump friendship... the day he was 'madder than a hornet' and the final call that never came

For over 27 years, Senator Lindsey Graham would call his communications director Kevin Bishop in his office after 9 am to start catching up on the news.

'He was not a morning guy at all, that's just not who Lindsey was,' Bishop chuckled in an interview the Daily Mail after Graham's death last Saturday. 

Known to dine out and enjoy drinks with colleagues and friends, Graham was a larger-than-life personality in Washington, DC, who preferred to stay up late.

Bishop said that as the 'early bird' in their dynamic, he'd wake up and prepare to get his boss up to speed so he could hit the ground running.

'We'd talk every day of the year except for Christmas,' he said.

That's the kind of senator that Graham was, Bishop said, a person who poured his entire life into his work and did not take off holidays, or sick days, or personal days.

'Lindsey worked incessantly... that guy never took a day off. Even when he was on the golf course, he was working,' he said. 'I think in his mind, God gave you so much time on this earth, and that he wasn't gonna waste any of it.'

Bishop spoke with the Daily Mail as he traveled to DC to meet with former friends and colleagues to remember their former boss.

Graham inspired great loyalty from his staff, Bishop said, as many of them stayed working for him for decades, some for even 32 or 34 years.

'The joke was if you had been here only ten years, you were still new to the job and still learning,' he said.

Graham would joke about everything, he recalled, ever the uncensored comedian making his way through his very busy life. 

'I want to die, but no time soon,' Graham would frequently joke with journalists and his Senate colleagues, citing the amount of work he had to do.

'He took the issues and he took his job serious, but he never took himself too serious,' Bishop said. 

When President Donald Trump first took office, Graham was one of many Republican senators who found the President abrasive, embarrassing, and politically foolish.

As Senate Republicans braced for a difficult four years, Graham started making a point of pushing back against Trump publicly.

'When he was on your team, Lindsay could really move the ball and when he was on the opposite side, he could really stop things,' Bishop said.

A group of influential mutual friends with both men, however, urged them to get together.

'They said, 'Listen here y'all need to go meet, we honestly think you'll like each other a lot,' Bishop recalled.

Before long, the pair hit the golf course together and became fast friends.

'Their love language was golf,' Bishop said.

Both of them had a great sense of humor and Graham learned what Trump appreciated most: honesty, directness, irreverence, and a healthy dose of respect.

'If you thought he was funny in public, you should have heard him in private,' Bishop said. 'I tell you, the guy could have been a stand-up comedian, he had the best sense of humor I've ever seen.'

Livid Trump opponents in the Senate were furious when Graham emerged with a relationship with the President that resembled a buddy comedy.

'They had a ball of laughs,' Bishop said. 'Lindsey always said if that if we had a lot more golf then politics would be a lot better off.'

Trump took his calls, and Graham loved phoning him at all hours of the day to offer his advice.

Democrats were appalled at the new Lindsey Graham who once denounced Trump in strong moral terms but soon became one of his fiercest defenders.

Graham's friendship with Trump angered many of his Senate colleagues, including some 'Never Trump' Republicans.

'There were some people that literally despised him, but Lindsey Graham never hated anybody,' Bishop said.

No one was more saddened by Graham's pivot than his old friend Joe Biden, who once traveled with him on a foreign Senate Congressional Delegation (CODEL).

'Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he's going to regret his whole life,' Biden said in 2019. 'I say, Lindsey, I'm just embarrassed by what you're doing, for you.'

Graham's friendship with Trump drew more angry protests wherever he went, but it did not change his demeanor.

Bishop recalled Graham crossing the street to meet with protesters and shake their hands.

'He would say, listen here, sorry we disagree on this but I appreciate you caring enough for your country to make your voice heard,' he said. 'It shocked the living s**t out of them that he would do that.'

Graham was never an angry person, Bishop recalled.

'I yelled at him more than he ever yelled at me, he was not a yeller, that was not his thing,' he said.

That made the morning of September 27, 2018 all the more remarkable at the height of the controversy surrounding Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

As Kavanaugh made his way through the confirmation process, Democrats surfaced at the last hour a questionable allegation of sexual assault from Christine Blasey Ford who claimed the incident took place in high school.

Bishop recalled that Graham woke up furious the morning of the Senate hearing with Kavanaugh, which was very unlike the typically gregarious South Carolina senator.

'He was so damn mad, he was madder than a hornet. I was honestly worried about what he would say because he can use colorful language,' he recalled.

Graham prided himself in taking seriously the Senate's advise and consent role, risking himself politically to vote to confirm President Barack Obama's Supreme court Justice nominees Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

Senate Democrats were not returning the favor, doing everything they could do to stop Kavanaugh.

When Graham began using his time during the committee hearing, Bishop and his colleagues braced for impact.

Graham was clearly struggling to hold back, despite his fury staffers noted, until he finally unleashed.

'What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020,' Graham said, his normally cheerful face twisted into a scowl.

He described the proceedings as the 'most unethical sham since I've been in politics.'

'Boy, you all want power. God, I hope you never get it,' he said. 'I hope the American people can see through this sham.'

Graham's staffers breathed a sigh of relief, after personally experiencing his uncharacteristic rage.

'What you all heard was the calm and controlled version,' he chuckled. 'They would still be paying the FPC fines if he had said on the air or at that hearing what he had said to us beforehand.'

Bishop said the last time he communicated with Graham was on the Senator's birthday, July 9th, when he sent him a text message. He knew his former boss was in Ukraine and didn't like speaking on the phone as he suspected the Russians were always listening. 

In response, Graham texted back to say he would call him when he got back to the United States. 

That call never came.