Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) expressed concern on Monday about the isolationist arm of the Republican Party, making him one of the most high-profile administration allies to publicly criticize a key faction of President Donald Trump’s base.

“On the right, there’s a growing isolationist movement that I fight all the time,” Graham said at an Orthodox Union Advocacy Center attorneys conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 

What alarms him, Graham continued, is that Republican isolationists are now beginning to target Israel as they seek to limit America’s activity on the world stage. He noted that many right-wing isolationists view Israel as the driver of Washington’s global interventionist approach.  

“It’s beginning to include Israel,” he said. “In the past it really hasn’t, but now it’s more open, and so there is an element of our party that’s saying, We don’t want to get sucked into endless war because of Israel.”

Graham’s comments come just a day after he told Fox News that the U.S. should back Israel if it attacks Iran’s nuclear capability, even as Trump has been floating the idea of negotiations with Iran. Graham said on Monday that he planned to urge Israel to take stronger action against Iran in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington this week. 

Vice President J.D. Vance gave a speech at the isolationist Quincy Institute in May 2024 in which he argued that the America First worldview should differentiate between U.S. support for Israel and U.S. involvement in other foreign conflicts — particularly Ukraine, as many Republicans have grown skeptical of U.S. military assistance to Kyiv. 

“It’s sort of weird that this town assumes that Israel and Ukraine are exactly the same. They’re not, of course, and I think it’s important to analyze them in separate buckets,” Vance said last year. 

Graham’s remarks underscore concerns from some Republicans that the isolationist wing of the party is now targeting Israel, too, as it seeks to shape Trump’s foreign policy. 

Isolationist foreign policy advocates have been elevated to key roles in the Department of Defense, but even hawkish congressional Republicans such as Graham have been reticent to publicly criticize them. 

Michael DiMino, Trump’s pick for deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, and Dan Caldwell, a Pentagon advisor who is playing a behind-the-scenes role guiding personnel decisions, have both made statements indicating that are at odds with the Middle East policy of Trump’s first term.

Elbridge Colby, Trump’s nominee for the Senate-confirmed post of undersecretary of defense for policy, has argued in favor of accommodating Iran’s regional expansionist agenda and opposed military action against Iran’s nuclear program.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) defended the Republican Party against allegations of antisemitism in its ranks during a web event Monday held in conjunction with the Republican National Convention, which kicked off today in Charlotte, N.C.

“I, personally, haven’t encountered any antisemitism within the Republican Party,” Zeldin, who is one of two Jewish Republican members of Congress, said. “From a personal perspective, I can tell you — from kindergarten through 12th grade, college, law school and four years of active duty, I never once experienced antisemitism at all.”

The New York congressman said during Monday’s call, which was hosted by the American Jewish Committee, that he’s only faced antisemitism in recent years, something he attributes to the current political atmosphere. He estimated “several thousand” instances of being called a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer but added, “I’m not aware of any of it coming from within the Republican Party.” 

Zeldin instead assigned blame to the Democratic Party, pointing in particular to comments made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in 2019. ”I spent four years in the New York State Senate, and through my first four years in the U.S. House of Representatives, I didn’t experience it inside the actual chamber until the beginning of 2019,” Zeldin said. “That became an issue within the House Democratic Caucus in the first half of 2019.” He recalled that the House of Representatives passed a watered-down resolution against hate following Omar’s comments regarding AIPAC and lawmakers’ support for Israel. Zeldin noted that a few months earlier, in January 2019, the House voted in near unanimous fashion on a resolution to condemn Rep. Steve King (R-IA) following comments from the congressman that appeared to defend white nationalists and white supremacists. Republicans “named names, there was a resolution that passed, that member lost his committee assignments,” said Zeldin. “We shouldn’t have double standards, we shouldn’t have moral equivalencies.” 

Zeldin suggested that if Omar’s statements had been made by a Republican legislator, “I guarantee you that we would have passed a resolution that singularly, emphatically and forcefully condemned antisemitism. There would have been no moral equivalencies, that member would have been removed from her committee assignments, and it would have been basically a unanimous effort in doing so.”

A number of Republican candidates have faced criticism this cycle for promoting antisemitic stereotypes. Georgia Senator David Purdue, who is facing a tough reelection challenge from Jon Ossoff, came under fire last month for a campaign advertisement that appeared to enlarge Ossoff’s nose. In the state’s 14th congressional district, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made claims about George Soros and the Rothschilds, won her party’s runoff and is all but guaranteed a seat in the next Congress.

Zeldin also suggested that the reason there’s not a major shift in support for President Donald Trump among Jewish voters is because Israel is “not popping at the top of their list” of priorities. “I’ll talk to a Jewish voter, and it’s possible that if I ask them for their top 15 issues, they might just not mention Israel,” he explained.