Over more than 23 years in the Senate, Lindsey Graham was one of the Hill’s most well-known hawks and, in recent years, one of Donald Trump‘s staunchest defenders.The South Carolina Republican has also, for over a decade, been among the media and pop culture’s favorite senators — a staple both of the Sunday morning talk shows and (without his participation) Saturday and other late-night comedy shows.A media-friendly quippiness, easygoing manner and zeal for arguing on behalf of U.S. military action made the 71-year-old, who died suddenly on Saturday night of unknown causes, a go-to for broadcast and cable-news bookers. The point was underscored by Graham’s scheduled appearance on Meet the Press Sunday morning. Graham had just returned from a barnstorming trip to Turkey and Ukraine, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and was expected to argue on behalf of more aggressive U.S. intervention in both Eastern Europe and the Middle East on the current-affairs show.Graham’s manner and media enthusiasm gave him a national profile far bigger than many other legislators, especially from small and midsize Southern states. Most Americans could not pick Graham’s fellow junior senators from neighboring North Carolina or Tennessee out of a lineup (Ted Budd and Bill Hagerty, for the curious). But Graham was instantly recognizable, as much for his face as his wry barbs, usually delivered in a downhome drawl.“Is this Watergate or Peyton Place?” the then-House member famously asked during the 1998 Bill Clinton impeachment hearings about the president’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, arguing that his fellow Republicans on the Judiciary Committee needed to chill the hell out. As a Washington Post profile at the time noted: “Lindsey Graham, a Twang of Moderation,” describing his “singular, humorous and highly quotable voice.”Where other senators were either not interested or not able to present their case on television, Graham appeared there time and again. Graham was a hawk on immigration and argued on cable news for months, eventually successfully, for the June passage of a $70 billion package to fund ICE. He also appeared last year on CNN’s State of the Union criticizing President Donald Trump’s pardoning of those convicted for Jan. 6 offenses, a rare recent split with the president.Graham kept a close relationship with TV journalists. “He was at the center of all of these debates in the U.S. Senate, not just right now but over the course of his tenure,” Meet the Press anchor Kristen Welker, told NBC South Carolina affiliate WYFF on Sunday morning, noting she had spoken to Graham multiple times in the past week.Graham also had a refreshing way of dropping the veil on the staid goings-on up Capitol Hill.At one point in the fraught Bret Kavanaugh SCOTUS hearings in 2018 — after a vote by the Judiciary committee meant a delay in confirming the president’s handpicked choice — Graham appeared in a media scrum on news coverage explaining the latest, which he closed with a droll “Now I gotta go tell Trump.” The moment offered a rare glimpse into the psyche of a Republican legislator contending with a mercurial president.