What was going to be a closed-door fellowship meal between the Senate Republicans and the president of the United States, donald trumpended like the rosary of dawn. The day before we began to sense that it was not going to be a friendly lunch. The Senate approved, with votes from four Republicansa motion in favor of ending the conflict in Iran, in what has been interpreted as the biggest parliamentary setback against the Republican president since he gave the order to bomb Tehran at the end of February.
The New York construction magnate has shown plenty of signs of having an angry character. He insults journalists who ask him uncomfortable questionsembarrassed the Ukrainian president in the Oval Office for not bending to his wishes and mercilessly attacks his Republican colleagues who do not go along with all his policies.
It was expected to be a lunch with few toasts. After learning that Congress approved the war powers resolution late on Tuesday, Trump refused this Wednesday morning to sign an ambitious bipartisan housing law, approved by Congress with a large majority, until legislators approve the Save Act, an election rule requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
At lunch behind closed doors, latent tensions surfaced for weeks. Trump led the way, according to several senators. The president was seen after the meeting accompanied by the majority leader, Republican Senator from South Dakota, John Thune, to ensure that he was the leader of a united party. “We like everyone in this room,” the White House occupant told reporters before adding: “There are some people I don’t like, but that’s okay. I think they know who they are.”
“I lost my temper”
According to the reconstruction carried out based on the testimony of several Republican senators to various local media, Trump expressed his discontent with the four Republican senators. who voted in favor of the war powers resolutionwhich prevents the president from ordering new attacks without the approval of Congress in the midst of peace negotiations with Iran. “It looked like a hospital board meeting where a bunch of doctors were yelling at each other,” described Kansas Senator Roger Marshall.
Added to all this is that there is a strange atmosphere in the Senate because Trump has supported candidates in the Republican primaries followers who faced some of the most independent current senators of their party. Despite everything, the Republican maintains great influence in his party and practically all the candidates he endorsed will compete for a seat in the midterm elections that will be held in less than six months. So several Republican senators sense that their political careers have ended because of Trump.
Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy described Trump as “furious as a murder hornet” about the vote, according to Washington Post. “He is in the middle of delicate negotiations and a Senate vote to withdraw from Iran.”
The most bitter confrontation occurred between the president and Republican Senator Bill Cassidy. “He asked us, ‘Why would anyone vote for the War Powers Act?’. So I stood up and said, ‘You haven’t told the American people what’s happening. (The war) was supposed to last four weeks, but it’s already been going on for four months. We haven’t reached our initial goals and I want to know what’s happening,” the Louisiana senator told reporters in statements reported by CNN.
Cassidy explained that the president then interrupted him and they engaged in a bitter exchange of accusations. “I didn’t care about being interrupted. I felt like I was trying to get answers for the American people, and I wasn’t going to let them intimidate me when I was trying to get them. So, it escalated from there,” Cassidy continued.
Trump yelled at Cassidy, who for his part acknowledged that he “lost his temper.” The Republican president has had his sights set on Cassidy for some time. He is one of the senators who has lost the Republican primaries because the Queens-born president has supported his rival.
When reporters asked the senator if Trump had called him a lunatic, he did not deny it. “Can I imagine that the President has called me with words that would be said in a school, in a playground? Yes, I can imagine it,” he said, according to CNN. “I make no apology for standing up to the president, so to speak, by trying to demand that more information be shared with the Senate and with the American people,” Cassidy said. “I am standing up for the American people, even as I speak to the president.”
Texas Senator John Cornyn was another of those who recounted the tense atmosphere at the meal. “The president concluded by preaching unity in the party, but he dedicated the entire hour to talking about issues on which we were not exactly united.” Cornyn was another of the senators who will lose his seat in November, because the tenant of the White House supported his Republican opponent in his party’s primary in Texas.
Beyond Trump’s discontent over the war powers resolution, the president was disappointed with his party after verifying that, despite having the majority, they lack the votes necessary to approve the electoral reform that the president craves so much. “I told them this is how things are today,” said Florida Sen. Rick Scott. “I’m a businessman. You have to live with your feet on the ground.”
