WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans walked into a lunch with the president on Wednesday looking for ways to unify, but they left the closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill as fractured as ever about policy goals.
President Donald Trump said after the huddle that he was “very proud of the party” but didn’t offer any concrete steps forward amid deep divisions on a nationwide voter identification law or other issues that don’t yet have enough GOP support to reach his desk.
“For the most part we have a really well-unified party,” Trump said. “And I said it very strongly, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
Republican senators said during hallway interviews after the meeting ended that it wasn’t entirely productive and didn’t create much, if any, goodwill.
Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy somewhat jokingly said the meeting went “swimmingly” before detailing a confrontation he had with Trump over the lack of information on the Iran war. Senators have repeatedly asked for a classified briefing from administration officials, but haven’t yet received one.
Cassidy, who lost his May primary after Trump endorsed an opponent, said the exchange began when Trump asked why four Republican senators voted with Democrats to approve a War Powers Resolution earlier this week. Along with Cassidy, they were Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine.
“I said, ‘Well, we’ve not been briefed on how it’s going, that the stated objectives don’t appear to be achieved, and it appears as if … it’s not going as well as we’re being told,’” Cassidy recalled. “At which point I think the president said something negative about me. I perceived it as attempting to bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know.
“And I’m not going to be bullied when I feel like I’m asking a question the American people need to know. And so at that point it began to escalate. And at some point it de-escalated.”
Trump declined to directly answer a question before the meeting began about whether he believes the voter identification law he advocates, which doesn’t have the votes necessary to advance in the Senate, is more important than a broadly bipartisan housing bill. The housing package would have given Republicans a legislative victory on the campaign trail roughly four months before the midterm elections.
The president was scheduled to sign that housing measure just before he met with Senate Republicans, but he canceled to press for the election bill, called the SAVE America Act.
The bill would overhaul how Americans register to vote and cast ballots in federal elections, such as requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and requiring a government-issued photo identification at polling locations.
“Every election is important. We’re doing very well,” Trump said.
“They want a lot of communists to come in,” he said, referring to Democrats. “I’m saying it a little bit differently but the people that they’re pushing are communists. And this country is not going to have communists.”
Trump ‘mad as a murder hornet’ about Iran vote
Florida Sen. Rick Scott said he hoped the meeting would help Republicans build consensus, though he acknowledged it led to tension.
“You’ve been around the president, he was pretty forceful about what he cares about,” Scott said, later adding his goal in organizing the meeting was “to try to bring people together.”
Scott said Senate Republicans didn’t talk with Trump about using the complex budget reconciliation process to establish grants for states that implement certain voter identification requirements. House Speaker Mike Johnson put the idea forward earlier in the day as one way to promote elements of the SAVE America Act.
Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said he appreciated the president’s “candor” during the meeting before saying Trump was “mad as a murder hornet about the war powers vote.”
“And I don’t blame him,” Kennedy said. “Put yourself in his shoes, he’s right in the middle of delicate negotiations and the Senate votes to get out of Iran. And it upset him.”
Kennedy said the president also pressed for the SAVE America Act, though he somewhat dismissed Johnson’s proposal to provide grants to states instead of enacting the entire bill.
“I don’t think that’s going to satisfy the president,” Kennedy said.
‘Like a hospital board meeting,’ with yelling
West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice said both Trump and Cassidy “expressed their feelings and didn’t hold back, but at the same time, it ended up respectful.”
“It was, I wouldn’t say super combative, but very passionate — very passionate,” he said.
Justice noted that “very, very few questions” were asked at the lunch.
Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall described Trump and Cassidy’s exchange as “very much like a hospital board meeting when a bunch of doctors are yelling at each other. But at the end of the day, we’ll figure out a way to get along.”
Trump, he said, was “very disappointed” by the four GOP senators voting this week to try to limit any additional military action against Iran.
“They’re trying to negotiate that and they feel like that vote from Republicans chopped their legs out from under them,” Marshall said. “And they’re making such incredible progress on this deal. So it’s hard for them to negotiate it when there’s two messages coming out of Washington.”
Pressed on the confrontation between Cassidy and Trump, Sen. Tommy Tuberville said the two “just had some differences of opinion about Iran.”
The Alabama Republican said “it was very cordial — it wasn’t over the top.”
Not many questions
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis acknowledged there was some contention in the meeting over the voter identification bill.
“I know there’s frustration over the SAVE America Act passage, but we simply don’t have the votes because we’re not gonna nuke the filibuster, so it’s more a matter of how do we move forward,” he said. “Not all of the meeting was contentious, but there’s a general consensus that we on Capitol Hill have to start getting in lockstep.”
When it comes to the bipartisan housing bill, Tillis said it being signed into law is “up to the president, we’ve done our work.”
South Dakota’s Mike Rounds declined to give details about the meeting but said that Republicans “had a good talking to,” and that senators did not ask the president many questions.
Rounds said while Trump pushed for the SAVE America Act, there was little acknowledgment that the Senate lacks the votes to pass the bill.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn said there “wasn’t really a lot of opportunity” to ask questions during the meeting. He said Trump spoke for one hour and 15 minutes.
Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said the president repeated some of the comments he posted on social media earlier in the day when he said he would refuse to sign the housing affordability package until Congress approves the election bill.
“He’s here to talk about whatever it is he wants to talk about,” Hawley said. “And without speaking for him, I think it’s safe to say that what he posted this morning is what he talked about.”
