Senator Lindsey Graham drops out of race for White House

“Today, I’m suspending my campaign for president”, Graham said in a video posted on YouTube.

“I was hoping not to have to make this call, but I think the time has come for me to suspend my campaign”, Graham told supporters during a conference call Monday. In an interview with CNN, Graham also highlighted the biased way the Republican debates are structured as a reason for his withdrawal. Though perceived as the most experienced of the GOP candidates on foreign policy, Graham never cracked 1% in the polls, even after witty and candid performances in the “undercard” debates. “I got into this race to put forward a plan to win a war we can not afford to lose”. The senator told CNN that he has “no intention” of endorsing another candidate anytime soon, and he’ll be focused on spending time with his family.

“You just can’t punch through when you’ve got a two-tiered system”, added Graham, who never made the main stage of a GOP debate, where he might have been able to trade barbs with front-runner Donald Trump.

Lindsey Graham was such a presidential candidate.

Graham had lobbed several attacks at Sen.

It was a privilege to support my dear friend @LindseyGrahamSC – thank you for all you have done for the country you love & serve so well!

“You need to start thinking about policies that actually work”, he said, possibly referring to his ban on Muslim immigration that Graham criticized during last week’s GOP debate.

But though he never gained traction, Graham seemed to be enjoying himself during his campaign: he responded to Trump by filming a video of him breaking his phone in multiple ways, and could always be counted on to call out the tough-talking billionaire.

But Graham’s cleverness couldn’t even keep him at the top of the GOP polls in his own state, and nationally he was an asterisk, stuck at 0.5% in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls.

With Graham’s exit, the endorsement of Senator John McCain is up for grabs-and given the former G.O.P. candidate’s popularity in New Hampshire, expect dozens of candidates to suddenly begin kissing his ring.

The decision to drop out of the race comes as Graham faced a deadline to withdraw from the South Carolina Republican primary.

Lindsey Graham said Monday that he has suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential race.

“I had the only cellphone in America they couldn’t hack into”, Graham joked about Chinese hackers during a New Hampshire campaign stop.