President Donald Trump met with Republican senators yesterday after having repeatedly clashed with them in recent days, demanding that they debate voting legislation that Republicans say does not have enough support to pass, and that they reach an agreement to end the war with Iran, an agreement that many of them have criticized. Yesterday, Trump had lunch with Republican senators on Capitol Hill, in his first meeting with the entire caucus since they had breakfast at the White House in November.
The lunch came hours after Trump surprised many Republicans by declaring that he would not sign a bipartisan housing bill, overwhelmingly passed in Congress, until lawmakers passed a voting bill, the Save America Act. After lunch, Trump affirmed that Republicans were united, although he acknowledged that he did not have a good relationship with all Republican senators. “We are very proud of the game.
We like our leader,” Trump told reporters, flanked by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, and other Republican senators. “We actually like everyone here. There are some that I don’t like, but that’s okay. I think they know who they are.” Trump’s relationship with some Republican senators has deteriorated in recent months, especially since he contributed to the defeat of two of them in the Republican primaries. Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, lost their primaries last month after Trump endorsed their opponents.
Neither has spoken to the president since he helped end their political careers. Cornyn lamented what he described as the recent disputes between Trump and Senate Republicans. “The main question I would like to ask the president is: Do you want to win the midterm elections?” Cornyn told reporters. “Infighting among Republicans is not conducive to victory. And if we want to win, I think we will have to change our ways.”
Last month, Trump angered Republican senators by reaching a deal with the Justice Department to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people, including his political allies, who allege they were unfairly prosecuted during the Biden administration. Some Republican senators expressed fear that this could benefit people convicted of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The administration eventually relented, but Trump has created more problems for his party.
Last week he ordered Jay Clayton, his nominee for director of national intelligence, not to appear at his Senate confirmation hearing. The move thwarted a Republican plan to renew a major surveillance law. The deal Trump reached with Iran has drawn strong criticism, including from some of his allies in the Senate. Additionally, Trump has spent months pressuring Republicans to pass an election law that Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and other Republicans say does not have enough support to pass.
Trump then further destabilized the Republican agenda by declaring that he would not sign the bipartisan housing bill, overwhelmingly passed in Congress, until lawmakers pass an election bill known as the Save America Act. He told reporters on Tuesday that he planned to lobby Republicans over lunch to find a way to get the bill passed in the Senate. “We have to pass it,” he said Tuesday in Pennsylvania. “So we will have to talk about that and many other things.”
The bill would require Americans to prove their citizenship when registering to vote and present a photo ID when voting. Trump has also proposed including other priorities in the bill, such as banning most mail-in voting, barring transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports and restricting gender transition health care for minors. Republicans have limited options to pass the bill, as all Democrats oppose it. They could eliminate the Senate’s current filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to pass most laws.
Or they could try to get around the filibuster by forcing a prolonged debate on the Senate floor and trying to wear down Democrats. Utah Sen. Mike Lee has pushed hard for months to go the second route, but other Republicans say the strategy is impractical and doomed to fail, and some have expressed frustration with Lee. “He doesn’t have the votes,” Cassidy told reporters. “So it’s time to talk about something else.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters that he believed Lee was motivated by “naïveté or a desire to get more likes on a social media post, or perhaps both.” “We are going down an unproductive path, and every minute we spend on it we are not spending on something that could help my colleagues get re-elected,” Tillis said. Lee hasn’t budged.
After Thune told reporters that his party must face the “harsh reality” that there are not enough Republicans who support eliminating the filibuster to pass the bill, Lee responded that he and his allies cannot be dismissed as “ignoring the harsh reality.”
Democrats have mocked Senate Republicans for feuding with Trump and each other. “Republicans are shooting each other down,” Republican Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared on the Senate floor on Wednesday. “They cannot govern even their own parliamentary group of 53 people, let alone a country of hundreds of millions.” Iran is another possible conflict point at lunch. Several Republicans, including Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Roger Wicker (Mississippi), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have criticized the agreement reached by the administration with Tehran.
“This agreement provides for sending $300 billion to the Ayatollah and the Islamic regime in Iran,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz. “That would be a very serious mistake. If the Ayatollah receives $300 billion, that money will be used to finance terrorism and murder Americans.” Trump doesn’t seem to be open to that kind of comment. Asked Tuesday about his message to Cruz and other critics of the deal, Trump told reporters: “I think anyone who criticized it should be polite, even if they are friends of mine.”
We are following an unproductive path, and every minute we spend on it we are not spending on something that could help my colleagues get re-elected.
Four Republicans, including Cassidy, went further and voted with Democrats on Tuesday to prevent Trump from ordering more strikes against Iran. Their support allowed the war powers resolution to pass the Senate, in a bipartisan condemnation of the conflict. Tillis and Cornyn stayed true to their party on the resolution but have become increasingly critical of the administration. Last year, Tillis decided not to run for re-election after Trump attacked him for opposing the Republican tax and domestic policy bill, giving him more freedom than some of his colleagues to challenge the administration.
Ahead of the May 26 primary runoff, Cornyn was respectful of Trump, even proposing last month to rename a highway in his honor. But he has spoken out more loudly since his loss to Ken Paxton, the controversial Texas attorney general whom the president endorsed despite Thune’s pleas for Trump to support Cornyn. Cornyn said Senate Republicans’ deference to Trump — including his own — doesn’t appear to have benefited them at all. He added that he believed Trump had endorsed Paxton in part to get back at Thune for failing to pass the Save America Act.
“I think he’s been punished for telling the president the truth,” Cornyn said, referring to Thune. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who coordinated the Republican senators’ Wednesday lunches, invited Trump to give a speech. Unusually, he did not give Thune advance notice before extending the invitation. Scott is one of Trump’s main allies in promoting the Save America Act. He has proposed holding daily votes during Senate sessions on the bill — or on parts of it, such as requiring proof of citizenship to vote — to keep up the pressure.
He said he expected the noon meeting to include the party’s accomplishments, the midterm elections and the Republican Party’s prospects in the final two years of Trump’s presidency. Thune, who met Trump for lunch Wednesday, acknowledged that he doesn’t always agree with him but said their relationship is strong. “I’m very direct with the president,” Thune told reporters Tuesday. “I speak frankly with him and vice versa. Sometimes we have differences of opinion, but I think what is important are the issues that really matter for the future of this country and for the American people; we have been united on them.”
Some Republicans have dismissed rumors of a rift between Trump and Thune as exaggerated. The lunch is a way for the party to come together, Wicker said. “We are a family and sometimes we have to talk things out,” Wicker said.