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The casket ‌of Lindsey Graham, the late Republican senator, has been carried into the Washington National Cathedral for a funeral service attended by US President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Ukrainian President ‌Volodymyr Zelenskiy and scores of senior officials.

Earlier in the day, lawmakers paid tribute at the Capitol Rotunda, remembering him as gregarious, funny and persuasive, a man whose outspoken support for an assertive foreign policy ‌made him one of the party's last prominent military hawks.

Trump, whom Graham denounced early in his political career before becoming a staunch supporter, spoke at the funeral, attended by leaders of some of the allied countries Graham forcefully argued the US should support during conflict.

"It really ended up being a great friendship," Trump said earlier in the day in an interview with Fox News, praising Graham for his help navigating partisan politics in Washington DC.

"If I needed a Democrat, he could usually produce that Democrat if I had to have them in an emergency. He was ‌a great politician and a ‌great gentleman."

Graham, a South ⁠Carolina Republican who died suddenly from a heart ailment on July 11 at age 71, was a military hawk who regularly ​called for an interventionist US role on the world stage and strongly backed both Israel and Ukraine, whose leaders travelled to Washington DC to pay tribute on Tuesday.

At the Capitol ceremony, Vice President JD Vance recalled him as a compelling figure in the Senate whose risqué jokes could make him laugh to the point of abdominal cramps.

"Because he loved people, he saw that the Senate, at its very best, could be a deliberative body geared towards persuading people," Vance said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said "there was no one, no one, who took his job more seriously than ⁠Lindsey Graham but also, no one was more capable of cracking up a room during the work ‌week here in Washington."