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- [00:00]
A
Hey everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing ed at the Bulwark, and I'm here with Sarah Longwell, our publisher. We are going to be talking about the pretty dramatic loss last night of Senator Bill Cassidy in his primary in Louisiana. The primary, you basically go to a runoff. Top two candidates make it. Bill Cassidy, the incumbent two term incumbent senator, finished third. Now, there's a couple of reasons why, but the main one is basically he voted to convict Trump after Trump's impeachment in the House following January 6, 2020.
- [00:31]
B
Our Constitution in our country is more important than any one person. I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.
- [00:39]
A
Yeah, that was enough. Trump went off on him on truth social beautiful.
- [00:46]
B
I voted to convict President Trump because he is.
- [00:50]
C
Oh my God.
- [00:51]
A
And Cassidy lost pretty convincingly. So I have a few takeaways here. But Sarah, what's your main takeaway?
- [00:58]
C
A few things. One, if you listen to the focus group podcast that I did with Tim about a week ago, it was clear as day this is what was going to happen. The voters in the group were sort of anyone but Cassidy and how they were feeling about things. And their reasoning was, yes, they saw him as a traitor to Donald Trump in the party. They also had complaints about his role in Covid and masking and things like that. They don't like his stance on vaccines, but it was very clear that it was really about seeing him as a traitor to the party. My main takeaway though, I've seen some things today in the results where people say, you know, this is what happens if you cross Trump, you end up, you end up gone. And there's some truth to that. Analytically, there's real truth to that. Right? There's not a lot of people who have either voted to impeach Trump or voted, well, mainly voted to impeach him. But there's in other ways cross him in major ways, like the way that Tom Massey is currently crossing him on the Epstein files. It's tough to survive because Donald Trump does still control a chunk of the primary voting base, a big enough chunk to usually get his way in Republican primaries. And Donald Trump, it has always mattered more to him to attack and control Republicans than it has to beat Democrats. Like in 2022. The reason that you that Democrats overperformed, one of the reasons there were a couple, but one of them was that Donald Trump endorsed maniacs who were extraordinarily loyal to him and they would go on to lose more competitive general elections. So Donald Trump still does control the, the base, but Also, this is the main takeaway for me. If you're going to cross Trump, you got to go down swinging like Liz Cheney. You can't do this. I'm going to, I'm going to vote to have Trump permanently barred from the party because I think that what happened on January 6th was so egregious, which I think is the correct take. And I appreciate that Cassidy did that. But to then go on and say to get back in Maga's good graces, I have to confirm RFK Jr. A radical anti vaxxer that I know is going to cost American lives when he himself is a physician, a doctor, I think was one of the most. It's always harder when somebody shows you that they have character in certain places and then they run away from the right thing. Like they do the right thing and run away from it. Which I think if Cassidy, he was going to lose his Senate seat the second that that vote was cast. But he could have lost today with integrity, with his integrity still intact. But because he both showed integrity and then ran away from it, he ended up in the sour spot with voters. And so he loses his seat and his integrity all at once.
- [03:47]
A
Yeah, I want to touch base on this. The idea of doing a middle ground type. I can jujitsu my way into getting through this primary while showing some spine against Trump, just not. There's no evidence. Right. Can you think of one Republican lawmaker who stood up to Trump and then got back in his good graces and enough that they could survive like I can off the top of my head,
- [04:09]
C
only in 2016, like your Marcos, your Lindsey Graham's, everybody, Ted Cruz. Right. Everybody who cried who in 2016, those guys all hugged Trump the hardest in order to rehabilitate their images. But subsequent efforts against him have all failed.
- [04:24]
A
Yeah, I'm trying. Not a single person who cast an impeachment vote or conviction vote has managed to find their way back into his good graces, period.
- [04:34]
C
Although Susan Collins, maybe. Maybe Susan Collins.
- [04:37]
A
I mean, I guess they know.
- [04:39]
C
They know they need that seat. And so he's careful about Collins. He doesn't attack her like he does Murkowski.
- [04:46]
A
Right. But even it's fun. And it's also, it's like, like yesterday as well. In addition to going off on Cassidy, Trump had this elite about Lauren Boebert who could. It's like of all people, Lauren Boebert went off on her wondering if someone could run against her in the Colorado primary. Now, idiotically, he didn't realize that the actual filing deadline had passed. It's impossible to run against her, but it's because she voted to release the Epstein files, just like Tom Massey. And so you, you could be the biggest sycophant in the world. You cross him once and you're going to get, you know, you're going to get his wrath, unless you're Susan K. I suppose, and you could take two lessons from that. One is that you can have just absolute, you know, you could be completely obsequious with respect to Trump. You can just bow down to him, do whatever he wants, and you can have a, you know, somewhat sturdy political career. You're gonna, you're gonna struggle potentially in a general election depending on the situation, but you'll, you'll be confident that Trump won't go after you. Or you can have, you know, some convictions and Cassidy just absolutely abandoned his convictions. And the biggest, you pointed to the most obvious case study of that, which was he essentially allowed RFK Jr to become our Health and Human Services Secretary. And he did it. And he knew it was a disaster. And the reason that we knew it was going to be disaster is because he himself went on the Senate floor and he insisted that he got assurances from RFK Jr that he wouldn't act in an abnormal or problematic way. And if you have to go on the Senate floor and say, oh, I've been told that this crazed lunatic with respect to vaccines will not be a crazed lunatic with respect to vaccines because he's going to clear thing by me, that's when you know that you're doing something wrong. So I want to go back into the archives and play that speech that Cassidy gave on the Senate floor explaining why he was going to vote for
- [06:41]
B
RFK Jr Mr. Kennedy, the administration committed to a strong role of Congress. Aside from he and I meeting regularly, he will come before the HELP Committee on a quarterly basis if requested. He committed that the Help Committee chair, whether it's me or someone else, may choose a representative on any board or commission formed to review vaccine safety. If he is confirmed, HHS will provide a 30 day notice to the help committee if the agency seeks to make changes to any of our federal vaccine safety monitoring programs. And HELP Committee will have the option to call a hearing to further review these commitments. And my expectation that we can have a great working relationship to make America healthy again is the basis of my support.
- [07:31]
A
None of that happened. Just to be clear, none of that happened. And I look at the stuff happening today, talking about Cassidy's career and you know, we have Mitt Romney tweeting.