Bill Cassidy accuses Trump of treating Congress as ‘merely an appendage’ | US politics
Bill Cassidy, the Republican senator from Louisiana who was ousted after Donald Trump successfully endorsed his opponent in the May primaries, accused the US president of treating Congress like “a mere appendage” in his handling of the Iran war.
In an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, the outgoing Cassidy described her recent face-to-face spat with Trump over his failure to brief Congress on the prosecution of hostilities with Tehran. In a rare instance of a Republican politician directly opposing Trump, Cassidy blasted the senator at a Capitol Hill luncheon over his support for the war powers resolution, a symbolic rebuke to the White House.
On the political talk show, after Trump “rebuked” Cassidy and three other Republican senators who voted for the resolution, he said Cassidy had let his “Irish rage” get the best of him. “I raised my voice to match his,” he said, echoing comments he had made recently.
Cassidy said the reason for his anger was that Congress was required to be notified in accordance with the separation of powers specified in the US Constitution. The founders of the United States designed this arrangement “so that the institution of the presidency would not be too powerful” and “to reflect the will of the entire American people, not just the will of one person.”
Arguing against this founding vision, Cassidy accused Trump of “acting like Congress is just an appendage, and frankly sometimes acting like Congress is an appendage.”
The senator added that Trump “did his duty” by giving him a briefing on the war from Vice President J.D. Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff after the acrimonious debate, which he acknowledged. Acknowledging this audience, Cassidy abandoned his support for the war powers resolution.
However, Cassidy’s low-key verbal comments on Face the Nation suggest that the senator remains emboldened, having been effectively ousted from the Senate seat he has occupied since 2015. On Saturday, Julia Letlow, Trump’s rival in the May Republican primary, won the second round He is in pole position to replace Cassidy in November’s general election.
Cassidy, whose supporters showed her independent streak by voting to convict Trump on impeachment charges for the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, had strong words for how the president’s second term is going. He questioned Trump’s priority on passing the Save America Act, which would impose new federal voting restrictions, and said he should instead focus on “how can we make life more affordable for the average American.”
He said: “If I were president, I would focus on what a family is looking at at the kitchen table as they go through their bills… How do you make their lives better?”
Cassidy also made threatening noises about the confirmation process for acting attorney general Todd Blanche, in which the senator will have a significant voting power. He was among a group of Republican senators who vented anger over the Justice Department’s attempts to establish a $1.8 billion so-called “weaponization fund” to pay Trump’s allies, as well as attempts to permanently shield the president and his family from IRS audits.
“I absolutely object to that,” Cassidy told CBS News. “Leaders should be held to a higher standard, not a different standard. They should be more accountable… I object to anything that goes against the spirit of this, and it is wrong to hold one person above the law.”
