‘Cassidy Unchained’: Senator Goes Scorched Earth on Trump After Losing Primary

Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA via AP Images

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) seems determined to exit the Senate in a blaze of glory after losing his primary to a challenger endorsed by President Donald Trump, opposing several key priorities for the president.

Cassidy ended up on Trump’s bad side when he was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted for conviction in the president’s second impeachment trial, which occurred in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Cassidy was censured by the Louisiana Republican Party for his vote.

The Louisiana senator is also a physician and has recently ramped up his criticism of Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., adding to the animosity.

Trump endorsed Rep. Julie Letlow (R-LA) over Cassidy and another MAGA Republican, former Rep. John Fleming (R-LA), a co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus who currently serves as Louisiana’s state treasurer. This set off a bitter primary battle rivaled in nastiness perhaps only by the Senate fight in neighboring Texas between Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Letlow and Fleming advanced to a primary runoff, and Cassidy was left out in the cold. The now lame duck senator took some verbal swings at Trump in his election night concession speech, saying that when you lose in a democracy, “you don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim the election was stolen,” and adding that he was not “bothered by being attacked on the internet,” because “insults only bother me if they come from somebody of character and integrity — and I find that people of character and integrity don’t spent their time attacking people on the internet.”

On Tuesday after Trump announced he was endorsing Paxton over Cassidy’s fellow Republican incumbent Cornyn, the Louisiana senator offered a scathing response, telling a reporter he thought Paxton was a “felon.” (Note: Paxton was indeed charged with multiple felonies in a securities fraud case but managed to keep the case dragging along for years and in 2024, reached a deal with prosecutors that let him avoid pleading guilty if he paid restitution to the former clients he was accused of defrauding, completed 100 hours of community service, and took 15 hours of legal ethics courses.)

Also on Tuesday, news broke that Cassidy said he would oppose Trump’s ballroom project, which currently has a chunk of funding the president wants entangled in Senate procedural rules for budget reconciliation bills. Cassidy followed that up with a vote to discharge a Democrat-sponsored War Powers Resolution on the Iran War.

Cassidy was one of four Republicans voting for the resolution, in what Punchbowl News congressional defense reporter Anthony Adragna called a “major rebuke of President Trump’s war.” The other three were Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Rand Paul (R-KY).

National Journal senior Washington correspondent Nancy Vu tweeted that the Louisiana senator was “entering his ‘Cassidy Unchained’ era,” and listed all the ways he had thwarted Trump just in the three short days since losing his primary.

Wrote Vu:

Since losing his primary *three* days ago:
– Cassidy stated he’d vote against the $1B ballroom project
-defended his vote to convict Trump back in 2021
-signaled he’d look to hold RFK Jr. “accountable”
-called Paxton a “felon” after Trump endorsed him
– and has now voted in support of Dems’ war powers resolution on Iran

The senator is entering his “Cassidy Unchained” era

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