Heated Meeting In The Capital

President Donald Trump blew up at Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana during an intense meeting behind closed doors in the Capitol on Wednesday after the Republican Senator accused the president of not being forthright with the American people about the Iran War. The argument got so loud and so intense between Trump and Bill Cassidy that a senator next to the Louisiana senator had to pull him back down into his seat. The fireworks started when Trump expressed his frustration over the Senate approving a war powers resolution on Tuesday, directing him to withdraw U.S. troops from hostilities against Iran, sending a powerful rebuke to the president. Trump asked, why would anyone vote for the war powers resolution, according to Bill Cassidy, who later recounted his tense debate with the president? I stood up and I said, is that a rhetorical question, or would you really like to know? Bill Cassidy said. When Trump said that he really wanted to know why Bill Cassidy and three other Republicans, including Senators Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski, all voted with the Democrats to attempt to curtail his authority as commander in chief, Bill Cassidy stood up and ripped into Trump's handling of the unpopular war. Quote, I stood up and I said, you have not told the American people what's going on. It was supposed to last for four weeks. It has lasted for four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved, and I want to know what's going on, Bill Cassidy said, recounting the heated back and forth. Trump infuriated over the Bill Cassidy defiance in front of the entire Senate-GOP caucus, started yelling at the senator, and Bill Cassidy yelled back, matching the president's tone and anger. He did not particularly care for my comments, raised his voice, I lost my temper. That's not appropriate. It's the Irish in me, he said. I matched his tone and his volume and it went back and forth. Bill Cassidy and Trump said, excuse me, Bill Cassidy said that Trump then got personal insulting him over his primary election loss. What does President Trump say? Oh, you lost the election. That sort of thing. Whatever comes to mind to demean another person, Bill Cassidy said. He then sat down at the urging of the senator next to him in an attempt to de-escalate. But the Louisiana Republican said that he is not sorry about clashing with Trump because he argued that the American people need to know and that the Senate needs to know more about what's happening with the conflict with Iran. Trump on Sunday again threatened to bomb Iran if it did not rain in its proxies in southern Lebanon, a threat of force that violated the memorandum of understanding that his administration signed with Iran. It does not appear that the course of this is going the way that we were told, so I make no apologies for standing up to the president trying to demand that more information be shared with the Senate and more information be shared with the American people. That's Bill Cassidy once again. If someone tries to bully me into not asking questions, I'm not going to accept that either. Trump still appeared angry when he walked out of the room. I don't like a few people, but I think you know who they are. Trump fumed to reporters as he left the meeting. Bill Cassidy has become one of the more vocal critics of the administration since losing his primary last month to a Trump-backed challenger. He had been the target of Trump's ire since 2021.

when he was one of only a few Republican senators who voted to convict Trump over his role in the Capitol riots on January 6th of 2021. But Bill Cassidy had generally tried to tow the line since then, confirming Trump's nominees, despite his reservations and voting with the president nearly all of the time during Congress. That all changed on May 16th since coming in third in a runoff election where one of the top candidates had Trump's endorsement. Bill Cassidy has voted with the Democrats on several key pieces of legislation and has spoken out against a number of administration moves, including ballroom funding, the so-called anti-weaponization fund and his appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence. Bill Cassidy is not the only GOP senator who has been more willing to speak out against Trump. Trump in the last few months and Wednesday's closed door meeting took place against a background of widespread frustration amongst the GOP caucus with the president's moves. Senator Ted Cruz, who has criticized Trump's deal with Iran to reopen the straight-of-war moves, described the tense meeting as a spirited conversation. Senator John Hoven said, we talked a lot about Iran. and the need to stick together and make sure that we finish and achieve our objections. Don't you just love this, by the way? Isn't this a perfect encapsulation of Washington? You have like everybody knows what happened. Everybody in the room knows what happened. Everybody who was in the hallway knows what happened. You know, it's a shouting match between the president and a senator and then there's people in the room and back and forth or whatever. And then you get people who were out there spinning. It was a very spirited conversation. We had a good time talking to each other as old chums do. Well done, everyone. Bravo. We spent most of our time on that conversation, said Hoven, detailing the long conversation about the Iran conflict. Senator Thom Tillis said that Trump also vented his frustrations over the Senate's failure to pass the Save America Act, which is stymied by a Democratic filibuster. Thom Tillis said that Republican leaders simply do not have the votes to abolish the Senate filibuster as Senate Majority Leader John Thune has repeatedly reiterated. I know there's frustration. over the Save America Act, but we simply don't have the votes because we're not going to nuke the filibuster. So it's more a matter of how do we move it forward. How do we get FISA done? The areas that we can work together on, he said. We've made it clear multiple times that if the Save America Act requires nuking the filibuster, it's simply not going to happen. And that's been obvious long before today. And I would love to pause there for a minute, too, because that is actually behind so much of all of this dysfunction. You note, I would think, I would hope, for those of you who observe, I would hope you would note the interesting difference that you see in state capitals versus the federal government when it comes to ability to do anything. I mean, say, look, say whatever you want to about Mills and the Democrats here, or, you know, the...

You know, the Republicans in Texas or Florida, right? Or say whatever you want to about, is it wise they did that? Is it not wise they did that? Is this a good policy? Is this a bad policy? One thing that you can't accuse them of is gridlock. You can't accuse them of dithering in action. You can't accuse them of not really moving legislation through the works. And the reason why is because a majority is a majority in basically every state in the United States. If you have the votes, you win. You push something through. I mean, like the Save America Act were it to go through the Florida legislature would have been passed three months ago. It would have passed it. It would have passed. I mean, because it has the votes. It has the votes to pass, but you can't break the filibuster, right? So the proposal cannot move through the U.S. Senate, but in the Florida Senate, it would be just fine. In the Florida House, it would be just fine. In the main house, it would, of course, be killed because it's controlled by Democrats, but just in the sort of interesting parallel universe where the Republicans controlled everything, guess what? It would happen there too. And it's because there is no filibuster. So when you're frustrated, when you look at these people, I mean, John Thune, let's talk about John Thune for a minute. Nobody's favorite Republican. John Thune, since becoming Senate Majority Leader, has been an unpopular one with the Republican base. And the reason why he's been an unpopular one is that he is deemed as insufficiently supportive of Trump's agenda, particularly on things like the Save America Act. They believe he should, quote unquote, just make it happen. And the fact that he's not means that he's actively resisting Trump and actively resisting the things about the Save America Act. And so because he is actively resisting these things that, you know, the Republican base believes are incredibly important, that means he's a bad guy. This is some, this is some bit, a little bit about what happened to Mitch McConnell. Good old cocaine Mitch. Cocaine Mitch, to me, is a maid man. I'm not saying I like Mitch McConnell, and he certainly needs to be gone from Congress because he's too old and too ill. And he's going to be because he's not going to run for re-election. So he'll be gone. But he's, you know, he was the leader for too long and, you know, all that stuff's true. But he was reviled by the base for not being supportive enough of Trump. Mitch McConnell is the reason. The singular reason. The one. why you have a 6 to 3 Supreme Court right now that has consistently made the progressive left howl, including but not limited to the abortion ruling from 2022, which no one who I've ever encountered in politics believed was ever going to happen. Growing up, Roe v. Wade was a fact of life. It was just going to stay there forever. It was always a fantasy. Even if you got conservative justices, they'd be too timid. They wouldn't really actually overturn it. It's not going to happen. You know, it's been baked in for too many decades. It's just there. Well, it was overturned. And why was it overturned? It's overturned because there's a 63 Supreme Court.

And by the way, parts of that decision were five to four. So it was important that there was a six to three decision there. But it's, of course, not the only decision. There has been repeated decisions at the Supreme Court level, which have been very good for conservative America. It's been like the last bulwark against a lot of the progressive growth. I mean, they slapped around Biden's, you know, a plan to try to buy off people's college debt. You know, that kind of there at least is a lot of it. There's a million things they've done that are very positive. Well, why are they able to do those positive things? And what would have the alternative been? Well, Merrick Garland in there, for one. Merrick Garland was the nominated Supreme Court justice that Mitch McConnell himself chose to ignore and wait out and give an opportunity to the next president to replace. And that's exactly why you have Neil Gorsuch. It's exactly why you have... you know, a six to three instead of a five to four with a very probably skippy five to four, I would say. It would not be a good situation. Certainly not as good as you have right now. And it's because of Mitch McConnell. Just the fact of life. So to me, that's, you know, in mob talk, he's a man. But then again, he gets on the other side of the president for a few high-profile issues, and now he's despised, and now John Thune is learning the same thing. But what is it to be opposed to the president and or that idea, or those ideas, if there's multiple ideas we're talking about here? What is it to be actually opposed? Is John Thune actually spiking or otherwise voting against or trying not to proceed with? Is he opposed? To the Save America Act and is secretly behind the scenes marionetting like, you know, trying to make people do what he wants, which is to stick the finger in the eye of the president. Is that what he's trying to do? I think people who pay attention know that's not true. He would like to pass it. He is voting for it. There's no question John Thune wants it passed. The question is, is he willing to nuke the filibuster? Or more importantly, can he nuke the filibuster? Are there votes that are there for that? Let's assume for a second, just for the sake of argument, that John Thune and Mitch McConnell before him and anybody who's in a leadership position in the Republican caucus in the U.S. Senate is hardcore behind the Save America Act, hardcore trying to get it passed, hardcore pushing, and I do mean hardcore, hardcore pushing to get rid of the filibuster. But you have, what, 53 votes, I believe it is? You have 53-ish votes in the U.S. Senate right now. And four people don't want to do that because they value the filibuster and they think it's a mistake to get rid of it. They can be wrong. You can think they're wrong. I do. I think the filibuster is completely trash and I want it gone. I've wanted it gone for a long time. So I actually do think it should be dispensed with. However, if they don't agree because they've been in the minority, these people have been in the minority with Harry Reid as the majority leader, and they have used the filibuster to stop some of the stupidest things you've ever seen proposed in Congress. It's not exactly an irrational thought, even though I disagree with it. If that's the opinion of those four senators, for instance, the votes aren't there for the filibuster. So what hell do you want John Thune to do?

What do you want him to do? Oh, make them. Okay, great. Well, how do you do that? Buy them off, bribery, you know, pork. I mean, like, sure, you could try all that stuff. What happens if it doesn't work? Is he a bad leader because they're intransigent about that issue? I don't know. I just thought I had when reading this article. But obviously, trouble in paradise in Washington, D.C., the president and his Senate caucus not really getting along right now, at least certain members of it. High drama. High drama. Yeah. Indeed.