In a preview of an interview that will air Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said yelling at President Donald Trump during Wednesday’s GOP luncheon accomplished his mission of getting a briefing on the negotiations in Iran.
Host Margaret Brennan said, “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?”
Cassidy said, “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. 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.”
Brennan said, “But that’s what he did.”
Cassidy said, “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.’ 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, my state and my country. As it turns out, I got a briefing afterward. 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.”
Cassidy said, “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.”
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