Senate GOP tries to make up with Trump after tensions boil over on Iran

Senate Senate GOP tries to make up with Trump after tensions boil over on Iran Comments: by Alexander Bolton - 06/25/26 6:20 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Alexander Bolton - 06/25/26 6:20 AM ET Comments: Link copied

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Tempers boiled over between President Trump and Republican senators after the president ambushed GOP lawmakers on Wednesday by refusing to sign a popular bill to address housing costs.

Trump then blew up at GOP lawmakers during a Wednesday lunch meeting over a successful resolution a day earlier that directed him to withdraw U.S. forces from hostilities against Iran.

In a sign of how badly the rupture jarred Republicans, the Senate GOP late Wednesday night quickly sought to make amends with the president, reversing course by rejecting a new Iran resolution that directed Trump to remove forces from hostilities with Iran without a declaration of war or a specific authorization for military force.

In a 47-50 vote, that measure, nearly identical to the one that was approved by the Senate on Tuesday in a vote that infuriated Trump, was defeated. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of four Republicans who voted for the previous measure, voted present this time.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who exploded at Trump during the Wednesday lunch meeting, voted against it after receiving a briefing on the Iran war at the White House ahead of the vote.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted for both the Tuesday measure and Wednesday’s GOP make-up vote.

The new vote does nothing to change the fact that the Senate had already approved a war powers resolution effectively rebuking Trump’s handling of the war. But even though the House and Senate had both approved that measure, it was not legally binding on Trump.

The late-night vote Wednesday did serve as a sort of political make-up move by the Senate GOP to a president increasingly angered by the body.

A wild 24 hours

It all capped a stunning 24 hours on Capitol Hill, on a Wednesday that was supposed to be a day of Republican unity on Capitol Hill.

Trump was scheduled to sign the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act in the House, which was to be touted as a major GOP accomplishment, before proceeding with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to a meeting with GOP senators to discuss plans for the rest of the year.

That went awry when Trump surprised GOP leaders by announcing on Truth Social that he would not sign the popular housing bill unless the Senate also passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, an election reform bill that has virtually no chance of passing the upper chamber.

Trump walked into the Senate’s Mansfield Room still fuming over the defection of four Republican senators who voted with Democrats the day before to approve a war powers resolution directing him to withdraw U.S. forces from the conflict with Iran.

Senate Steering Committee Chair Rick Scott (R-Fla.) invited Trump to the meeting in hopes of getting the president and GOP senators on the same page about how to handle the SAVE America Act and to discuss how to handle another possible government shutdown later this year.

Scott had invited Trump on Friday to speak to Republican senators at the lunch meeting he hosts every week — but that was before Trump suffered an embarrassing setback on the war powers resolution.

The Wednesday meeting soon turned into an angry gripe session about the Iran war.

“Iran was the dominant topic,” said a Senate Republican source familiar with the conversation. “The mood-setter for [the president] was his displeasure with the Iran vote.”

Trump was furious over the four Senate Republican defections, which came after the House passed the same measure earlier this month.

When Trump asked why any Republican would vote for a resolution to curtail his authority as commander in chief, Cassidy bluntly told him that he hasn’t been forthright with the Senate or the American people about the handling of the conflict.

“I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on. It was supposed to last four weeks, it’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved, and I want to know what’s going on,’” Cassidy said, recounting the heated back-and-forth.

That act of defiance provoked a furious reaction from Trump, who accused Cassidy of being a sore loser after finishing in third place in his Senate primary election last month.

Trump started yelling at Cassidy, but then, to many senators’ surprise, Cassidy — the usually polite-mannered former medical doctor — yelled back and even had to be urged by a colleague to sit down to “de-escalate” the tense situation.

“He did not particularly care for my comments, raised his voice. I lost my temper, that’s not appropriate — it’s the Irish in me,” Cassidy said. “I matched his tone and his volume, and it went back and forth.”

Trump responded by calling the Louisiana senator a sore loser.

“What does President Trump say? ‘Oh, you lost the election,’ that sort of thing, whatever comes to mind to demean another person,” Cassidy recalled.

A second person familiar with the meeting said Trump repeatedly called Cassidy a “loser” and “a traitor” and told him to sit down.

But Cassidy pushed back angrily, telling Trump heatedly: “I won’t sit down. I don’t work for you; I work for the people of Louisiana.”

The source said Trump then “started ripping” Murkowski and Paul, who also voted for the war powers resolution on Tuesday.

Trump even dinged Sen. David McCormick (R-Pa.) for missing Tuesday’s vote, which helped enable the measure to pass with just four GOP defections.

McCormick was back at the Senate on Wednesday night for the late vote, the last one before the Senate begins a July 4 recess. He voted to reject the measure.

Collins, who is in a tough reelection race, was not named by Trump.

Trump appeared angry when he walked out of the meeting, telling reporters: “I don’t like a few people, but I think you know who they are.”

But Cassidy said he didn’t have any regrets about the heated clash, which left some colleagues squirming in their seats.

“I make no apologies for standing up to the president, trying to demand that more information be shared with the Senate and more information be shared with the American people,” he said.

“If someone tries to bully me into not asking that question, I’m not going to accept that, either,” he added.

Later on Wednesday, Cassidy said on X that he appreciated the late night briefing led by special envoy Seve Witkoff, and told reporters after the vote on the second Iran measure, which he rejected, that he was satisfied with what he heard.

Scott had convened the conference meeting in hopes Trump would mend fences with Senate GOP colleagues after the battles of recent weeks.

Those include fights over the extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s enhanced surveillance authorities, the choice of Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, to serve as director of national intelligence despite not having a security clearance, a proposal to create a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund and other disagreements.

“My experience, the only way you get things done is by bringing people together and having conversations,” Scott told reporters Tuesday.

A Senate GOP aide acknowledged there has been some bad blood between GOP senators and Trump in recent weeks.

Trump did most of the speaking Wednesday, holding the room for an hour and 15 minutes, according to a senator who participated.

The meeting was expected to touch on Iran but focus more on Trump’s desire to pass the SAVE America Act, but that plan went off the rails when the president and Cassidy started screaming at each other.

“I think it would have gone differently if Cassidy didn’t freak out on him,” said a third Senate GOP source familiar with the meeting.

The source said Trump expressed his frustration over the Senate’s passage of the war powers vote while he’s in the middle of delicate negotiations with Iran about securing a lasting peace deal.

“[Cassidy] elevated, and then Trump elevated and Thune had to try to calm Cassidy down, and Trump was telling him to sit down,” the source said, describing the chaos in the room.

Republican senators were expecting a contentious meeting after Trump shocked GOP lawmakers earlier in the day by bashing the housing bill they were planning to campaign on this fall.

Trump dismissed the significance of the bill, which he described as an “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill,” in a Truth Social post.

Trump said it “pales in comparison to passing the SAVE America Act,” and he urged GOP leaders to “get the bad Republicans to approve it or, better yet, Terminate the Filibuster and approve it, AND EVERYTHING ELSE REPUBLICANS HAVE EVER DREAMED OF.”

Then Trump dropped another bombshell by announcing he wouldn’t even sign the housing bill, though supporters of the legislation noted it will become law in 10 days unless the president vetoes it.

The announcement caught Thune completely off guard.

“I just heard about it,” he said as he walked off the Senate floor shortly after Trump’s post. “At this point, I don’t have any observations about that.”

Other GOP senators were gobsmacked.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) called Trump’s threat not to sign the bill “inexplicable” after the White House gave it a strong endorsement earlier this month.

Trump in a signed proclamation on June 12 called the bill “the most comprehensive and consequential legislation in the history of our country.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Trump’s refusal to sign the bill would be a political gift to Democrats.

“I don’t know why you’re holding a bill that’s ready for signature hostage over a bill that will never pass this Congress, makes no sense to me,” Tillis said.

“There is a huge group of people who really appreciate what the president’s doing right now, and it’s the Democratic Party,” Tillis added.

Collins said she couldn’t understand Trump’s refusal to sign the bill, which was sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and includes reforms to unleash free-market forces to create more housing supply.

“It makes no sense. This bill has very strong bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. The primary author is a Republican senator, and it addresses an issue that affects many American families who find the cost of housing to be a tremendous burden,” she said.

Add as preferred source on Google Tags Bill Cassidy John Thune Lisa Murkowski Rand Paul Rick Scott Susan Collins

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