Monday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) claimed that if Congress did not act like “yes” men on President Donald Trump’s tariffs, their favorables would be much higher.
Host Wolf Blitzer said, “Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy became the first Republican senator this weekend to lose his primary in nearly a decade.”
He asked, “Senator Cassidy voted to convict President Trump in his second impeachment trial, and face the Trump endorsed challenger in his primary race. What do you take away from his loss?”
Bacon said, “Well, the president has a lot of leverage in the primaries. There’s no doubt. He did come after me in 2022. I was able to prevail, but for the most part, the president has had tremendous success in the primaries. The problem is it doesn’t translate one for one anyway, in the general election, right now. Well, I saw polling today where he’s at 37%, and the generic polling showing the Democrats are up about 11 points. That is a recipe for a very hard November for my party. And what I think most voters want is they like a lot of the president’s policies, but they don’t want a rubber stamp. They want some checks and balances as the Constitution put us there for that purpose. And right now they’re not really seeing that checks and balances they are sort of seeing a yes man mentality. And I think that will hurt us.”
He added, “I do think the president wants blind loyalty in Congress from Republicans. He’s not the only president to have demanded this in the past, but I don’t think it works for them in the long run. Some independent thinking and feedback would make them stronger. And I believe that if Congress would have stepped in more on tariffs and on Ukraine, our favorables would be much higher.”
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