President Donald Trump and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) “went at each other” during a Wednesday meeting with the Republican caucus.
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Trump was on Capitol Hill, where he was to sign a bipartisan bill that aimed to make housing more affordable. Trump was dismissive of it on Truth Social, calling it “of minor importance.” He then announced he was canceling the bill signing altogether.
“Trump and Cassidy just went at each other over Iran during the Senate GOP lunch, per [a] source in room,” said Punchbowl News reporter Andrew Desiderio. “Trump was interrupting Cassidy as Cassidy was calling the war a ‘blunder.’ Other senators tried to jump in but Cassidy and Trump kept going back and forth, source said.”
The battle goes back to the years-old bad blood between the two men. Cassidy is one of the long-time Republicans who Trump ousted in a GOP primary despite placating Trump during confirmation hearings. However, Cassidy was one of very few Republican lawmakers in 2021 who believed that they should hold a trial in the Senate over the second impeachment of Trump, earning him Trump’s permanent hostility.
Since losing his primary, Cassidy has said publicly that he wouldn’t turn against the president. His actions have proved otherwise, however.
In the matter over Trump’s nearly $1.8 billion Justice Department “slush fund,” Cassidy was working up until the Homeland Security budget vote, “trying to perfect language to drive a stake through [it],” reported The Hill in early June.
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Explaining his convictions, Cassidy said, “I would like to fund control of the border but also do something about the weaponization fund. I’m trying to strike that balance.”
Last week, Cassidy scored Trump’s 14-point proposed Iran peace agreement.
“The details that I’ve seen so far look … awful,” Cassidy told reporters. “This will go down as a tremendous foreign policy blunder.”
If the terms are accurate, Cassidy said that it would ultimately put Iran in a stronger position than it was before the war began. Meanwhile, it would leave allies in the Middle East weaker.
“It’s clear that they [the administration] don’t have a plan. Or if this is the plan, it’s not a very good plan, and that’s because it’s now been five months,” Cassidy added. “So that’s why I think Congress needs the ability to be fully briefed and to weigh in. Not to be told kind of top line what’s going on, but to be fully briefed. And that’s my… goal right now. Let the American people, by their elected representatives, have input into what we’re doing, because it’s not going as we were promised that it would go.”
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