Cassidy says – Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan that after a Wednesday clash with President Donald Trump over a non-binding resolution to end the war in Iran, he changed course on his War Powers Act vote only after receiving a late Wednesday Situatio
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) didn’t describe his Wednesday lunch with President Donald Trump as a strategy session. He described it like a breakdown in the one thing he believes lawmakers can’t afford to lose: access to the facts.
The Louisiana Republican’s public sharp turn—first voting in favor of a non-binding resolution directing the Trump administration to end the war in Iran. then later saying he changed his mind—came after a late Wednesday briefing in the Situation Room. Cassidy said. In that meeting. he received information that. he argued. shifted his view of whether key objectives could actually be achieved within a projected timeline.
Cassidy sat down with CBS News’s Face the Nation moderator Margaret Brennan this week after the fight at the GOP luncheon that, he said, didn’t just escalate his relationship with the president—it raised questions about whether Congress was being treated as a partner.
Brennan began by laying out what she said happened in the days that followed Cassidy’s earlier vote.
“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 asked.
Cassidy replied that the shift wasn’t rooted in a sudden change of heart about the broad goals of the campaign. His original rationale for supporting the War Powers Act, he said, was that “we were not being briefed — we, the Senate, the Congress of the United States.”
“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,” Cassidy said.
After the exchange with Trump, Cassidy told Brennan he 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 recalled telling him.
Cassidy said Witkoff called him back within an hour and told him to come for a briefing.
“He called me back in the hour, and said, ‘let’s have a briefing.’ We had it last night,” Cassidy said.
Brennan pressed him on the content of what he received.
“What did you hear that changed your mind?” she asked.
Cassidy said that the objectives described to him were to “destroy — degrade. if you will — Iran’s nuclear capability. their ability to do a ballistic missile. and their conventional warfare capability. ” and that they were supposed to leave “in four to five weeks. ” with “maybe a little bit of a sprinkling of regime change.”.
But in the new information, Cassidy said he learned that the picture had changed in one major respect.
“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,” he said.
With those aims in play, Cassidy said the remaining requirement was accountability.
“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,” he said.
The conversation then turned back to Wednesday, when Cassidy and Trump raised their voices in what Brennan described as a closed-door meeting after Cassidy had voted with other Senate Republicans for the War Powers Act.
Brennan asked Cassidy whether Trump had effectively backed down by offering the briefing.
“You said you won’t be bullied,” she reminded him. “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 pushed back on the framing, saying his profession shaped his instinct for questions.
“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,” he said.
Cassidy added that he views public service the same way.
“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. ” he said. before extending the point to what he called the public’s need for truth. “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.”.
He said he wasn’t prepared to accept verbal abuse directed at the people who had voted for the War Powers Act.
“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,” Cassidy said.
Brennan noted that Trump, in fact, had done it anyway.
“But that’s what he did,” Brennan said.
Cassidy said he tried to ask a straightforward question in the room.
“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 recounted.
Cassidy said he stood up and laid out what he believed those objectives were and why he thought they weren’t being met, including how he saw the 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,” Cassidy said.
He acknowledged he lost his temper.
“Now, I shouldn’t have lost my temper, nor should he,” he said. “But, you know, my wife will tell you, every now and then my Irish temper gets the best of me.”
Still, Cassidy returned to his central point: he needed information in order to do the job.
“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,” Cassidy said.
Brennan then pressed again on what Cassidy had said the American people needed: public hearings and briefings.
“But you had also said the American people need that information. The American people aren’t getting those public hearings and briefings,” Brennan said.
Cassidy responded that, when he asked about transparency during the briefing, officials told him negotiations were fragile.
“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,” Cassidy said.
He said he could accept the explanation.
“I can accept that. Sometimes you have to have some space for people to come to an accommodation,” Cassidy said. “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 said.
Cassidy’s account places the story of the moment squarely on access—what he said he didn’t receive until after he confronted the president. and what he believed those details changed for him. For him, the shouting match was never the main point. It was the price of getting the information he said he needed to decide.
Bill Cassidy Donald Trump War Powers Act Iran war Situation Room briefing Steve Witkoff Mike Pence Margaret Brennan Face the Nation GOP luncheon Louisiana Senate