GOP Senator Says He Achieved His ‘Mission’ By Yelling At Trump Over Iran War

Margaret Brennan, the moderator of CBS News’s Face the Nation, sat down with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) this week following the Louisiana Republican yelling at President Donald Trump during Wednesday’s GOP luncheon.

Cassidy and Trump tussled over his vote in favor of a non-binding resolution directing the Trump administration to end the war in Iran, a vote Cassidy now says he’s changed his mind on. Trump endorsed Cassidy’s GOP primary opponent, effectively ensuring Cassidy would not be reelected this November.

“So Senator, as I understand it, the Vice President and Special Envoy Witkoff gave you a special briefing in the Situation Room late Wednesday on Iran. What you heard made you change your vote. And why are you no longer trying to stop the president from resuming strikes in Iran?” Brennan began.

“That’s actually not my original rationale for voting for the War Powers Act. My original rationale is because we were not being briefed, we, the Senate, the Congress of the United States. And I felt it was important that we be briefed,” Cassidy replied, adding:

I agreed with the president’s original goals; those had not been achieved, by my perception, and so before I can say, “okay, everything’s hunky-dory,” I said I need to be briefed. After the exchange I had with the president yesterday, I passed a note to Steve Witkoff. “Steve, I would consider changing my vote, but I’ve been voting yes because I’ve not been briefed,” he said. He called me back in the hour, and said, “let’s have a briefing.” We had it last night.

Brennan pressed, “What did you hear that changed your mind?”

“So, if the original objectives were to destroy, degrade, if you will, Iran’s nuclear capability, their ability to do a ballistic missile, and their conventional warfare capability, and we’re supposed to be out of there in four to five weeks, with maybe a little bit of a sprinkling of regime change, that’s how it came across,” Cassidy answered, adding:

The regime change is off the table. That doesn’t seem as if that’s going to happen. But it does seem, as if the way they laid it out, the other three objectives can be reached. And with those other three objectives, now we have to trust and verify, but as they laid it out, they have a plausible plan by which to achieve those, and that’s what I was interested in.

Brennan followed up, “You wanted to get the details on the diplomacy. Correct. Okay. Because on Wednesday, you and President Trump had that angry exchange, raised voices, you said, along with other Senate Republicans, in this closed-door meeting. He berated you for that vote you had taken previously to try to stop the war. You said you won’t be bullied. Did you feel that he backed down by giving you that briefing? I mean, isn’t sharing information just a basic expectation that lawmakers like yourself should have fulfilled? Why does it take a shouting match?”

“Let’s back up a little bit, if we may. I’m a doctor. I am going to try and get as much information as possible to come to the truth of someone’s diagnosis and the truth about how to treat that problem, as much information as possible,” Cassidy replied, adding:

You deny me that information, and I’m going to be frustrated, because my job is to serve with the information I have before me. By the way, I take that same ethic to public service. Our society has problems. What is the truth behind the cause of that problem? What is the truth about how to solve it? If you’re not telling me answers, I’m going to push for those answers. So when the president was berating the four people that voted for the War Powers Act, frankly, I’m not there to be berated. And the president wasn’t invited to dish out verbal abuse.

“But that’s what he did,” Brennan noted.

Cassidy agreed, “I raised my hand. I said, ‘Mr. President, do you just want, is that a rhetorical question that you’re asking, why do we vote for it, or are you really interested?’ He goes, ‘I’m really interested.’” Cassidy continued:

I stood up, and I said, “this is why,” and I listed those objectives that I did not see being achieved, and how the kind of endpoint of the war kept stretching out longer and longer. He began to speak over me. Unfortunately, I raised my volume to match his, and we spoke to each other like that, or shall we say, spoke at each other, not to each other.

Now, I shouldn’t have lost my temper, nor should he, but, you know, my wife will tell you, every now and then my Irish temper gets the best of me. But, point being, I needed to know. I need to know, to serve my people and my state and my country. As it turns out, I got a briefing afterwards. In one sense, I actually accomplished the mission of what I needed to do.

Brennan added, “But you had also said the American people need that information. The American people aren’t getting those public hearings and briefings.”

“So last night, when I asked about that in my briefing, they said right now the negotiations are delicate, and they could collapse if they’re not nursed along in the appropriate way. I can accept that. Sometimes you have to have some space for people to come to an accommodation. And that’s how they said, that’s the reason they said, for their kind of lack of being forthcoming. I can accept that. But my goal was to be briefed, to have the truth in order to make a decision for the benefit of my country, and that was satisfied,” Cassidy answered.

Watch the clip above via CBS News.

The post GOP Senator Says He Achieved His ‘Mission’ By Yelling At Trump Over Iran War first appeared on Mediaite.