Here’s What Trump Demanded From Republican Senators Behind Closed Doors
President Donald Trump made a rare visit to the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, where he demanded Republican Senators unite to pass the SAVE America Act and harshly reprimanded Republicans who have opposed him on the Iran war.
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“The president wants the SAVE Act, and that was the theme of pretty much the entire luncheon,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters after a closed-door meeting, referencing a bill which would require photo identification and proof of citizenship in elections.
Kennedy added the president was “very upset” about a recent Senate vote in which the chamber voted to deprive him of his power to use military force against Iran.
Trump was invited by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who for months has been championing the SAVE America Act.
“I think we had a really great meeting,” Trump told reporters. “We’re very proud of the party. We like our leader, we like everybody, really, in the room. I don’t like a few people, but that’s okay. I think you know who they are.”
Trump set the tone of the meeting before it even started by cancelling a scheduled signing ceremony for a housing policy bill that passed by overwhelming margins in the House and Senate.
The president declared it “cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has argued the Senate lacks the votes necessary to pass the bill, much less the votes necessary to side-step the chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Thune has spoken in favor of the Senate’s focus on other legislation in the waning days before the midterm elections.
Trump urged Republicans in the meeting to pass the bill by any means necessary, according to attendees.
“The president was there to sell SAVE America—break the filibuster if you want to, if we need to, whatever it takes to do. He wants that to pass so badly,” said Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kans.
Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., told reporters that he is personally “in favor of the housing bill, for sure,” but that he understands Trump’s desire to prioritize SAVE America over it.
“He thinks that it’s really important that we move forward on SAVE America, and that’s his whole mindset,” Justice said.
It was a mostly one-sided conversation according to senators.
Asked if they had confronted the president on the housing bill, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., laughed and told the Daily Signal, “Oh, we didn’t really make any recommendations during this conversation.”
Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., also laughed when asked if senators had chimed in, replying, “It was mostly the president sharing his views.”
According to multiple reports, the meeting blew up when Trump confronted Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., about having voted for war powers resolutions challenging his authority to use force against Iran.
Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, recently lost his Senate primary to a Trump-backed challenger.
According to Cassidy, Trump asked why anyone would vote for the resolution.
“I said, ‘is that a rhetorical question?’” Cassidy told reporters he asked Trump. “He said, ‘I’d like to know.’”
Cassidy says he then “stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on. [The war] was supposed to last four weeks. It’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved, and I want to know what’s going on.’”
Cassidy says that’s when the shouting happened.
Trump “did not particularly care for my comments, raised his voice, [and] I lost my temper. That’s not appropriate, it’s the Irish in me, but I, again, matched his tongue and his volume, and it went back and forth.”
Multiple senators made sarcastic quips about how unifying the meeting was.
“Quite a unity message,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, after exiting the meeting.
Cornyn, who recently lost his Senate primary to a Trump-backed challenger, later added, “The president closed by preaching unity, but he spent the entire hour talking about things which were not exactly unifying.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who announced his retirement last year shortly after Trump threatened to back a challenger against him, R-N.C., similarly joked it was a “great moment of fellowship.”
Kennedy argues one should not look too far into the president’s bombastic style.
“The president is very, very candid. The president exists loudly,” said Kennedy. “I’ve known him for 10 years, and I expect no less… He told us exactly how he felt.”
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I am just an average American. My teen years were in the late 70s and I participated in all that that decade offered. Started working young, too young. Then I joined the Army before I graduated High School. I spent 25 years in, mostly in Infantry units. Since then I've worked in information technology positions all at small family owned companies. At this rate I'll never be a tech millionaire. When I was young I rode horses as much as I could. I do believe I should have been a cowboy. I'm getting in the saddle again by taking riding lessons and see where it goes.
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