The Republican US Senator’s suffered a tongue lashing from their party leader, who happens to be a President running out of juice….
One doubts the Senate is gonna give much of what they haven’t so far…..
Senate Republicans hoped to use a closed-door lunch to clear the air with President Donald Trump. Instead, the president vented his frustrations with the senators for more than an hour, leaving them no closer to detente.
The meeting came at an explosive moment, with GOP lawmakers increasingly frustrated by Trump’s mercurial treatment of congressional Republican priorities. Just hours before arriving on Capitol Hill, Trump delivered his latest rug-pull — announcing he would refuse to sign a major housing bill that leaders were already touting after big bipartisan majorities passed it this week.
But senators said Trump arrived determined to prosecute his internal grudges against the Republican lawmakers who have opposed him at times — particularly those who have expressed misgivings about the Iran war and who are refusing to comply with the president’s demands for swift passage of a controversial elections bill.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) described Trump as “mad as a murder hornet” about the Iran vote, while Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) described the scene as “very much like a hospital board meeting, when a bunch of doctors are yelling at each other.”
Another GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, called the lunch “very intense.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), deploying some go-to congressional lingo for heated encounters, called it “spirited,” “frank” and “candid.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters Trump ended on a unifying note but only after spending an hour “talking about things which were not exactly unifying.”
Trump and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) sparred at length over the Iran war, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the private interaction.
Trump also railed over Tuesday’s successful war powers vote, lambasting Cassidy and three other GOP senators who voted for the resolution. He also complained about Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) missing the vote; he was attending a Trump rally in his home state Tuesday.
Cassidy acknowledged the two had a heated exchange to reporters after the lunch. After Trump questioned why Republicans would vote against him on the war, Cassidy said he told the president that the conflict was not going as well as senators were being told.
“The president said something negative about me. I received it as attempting to bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know, and I’m not going to be bullied,” said Cassidy, who recently lost his campaign for renomination after Trump endorsed against him.
Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) also confirmed the exchange between Trump and Cassidy. He said the two “harbor bad feelings” and urged them both to move on.
The meeting also failed to reveal a way forward on Trump’s No. 1 priority, the elections bill known as the SAVE America Act….