President Trump and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) got into a shouting match during a lunch meeting over the US war with Iran.
GOP senators described Trump as being “mad as a murder hornet” and raising his voice at the Louisiana Republican for joining three other Republicans in a vote limiting his wartime authority.
Cassidy speaks out after clash with Trump:
Cassidy, who later quipped that the talks went “swimmingly,” called the president “my brother” several times during the heated exchange to lower tensions, Senate GOP sources said. The president spat back that Cassidy wasn’t his brother and told him to sit down.
Cassidy later recounted to reporters, “[Trump] did not particularly care for my comments, raised his voice, I lost my temper. It’s the Irish in me.”
“But again I matched his tone and his volume, and it went back and forth. So I sat down and tried to de-escalate. I guess my point is, though, that the American people need to know more than we are being told. The Senate needs to know,” he further explained.
Cassidy lost his re-election bid this year when Trump backed his primary opponent in Louisiana.
Trump call meeting with GOP Senator ‘really great:’
The more-than-hourlong meeting with Trump focused mostly on the Iran war and the War Powers Resolution.
On Tuesday, June 23, the Senate approved a Democrat-led resolution to keep the president from ordering further military action in Iran. Four Republicans voted in favor of the concurrent resolution, which is symbolic and does not carry the force of law.
Trump told reporters after Wednesday meeting, refraining from naming names, “We had a really great meeting, and we’re very proud of the party. We like our leader. We like everybody. Really, in the room, we don’t like a few people, but that’s OK. For the most part, we had a really well-unified party.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) sarcastically told reporters the exchange was “very pleasant” before describing how Trump and Cassidy butted heads.
