Tempers Flare and Voices Are Raised as Trump and Senate Republican Go Toe-to-Toe in Closed Door Meeting

It appears that cooler GOP heads are not prevailing at the Capitol.

Multiple outlets are reporting that President Donald Trump was apparently as “mad as a murder hornet” in a testy exchange with outgoing Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy that involved quite a bit of shouting.

According to the New York Post, Trump and Cassidy were at a Republican luncheon behind closed doors when tempers began to flare.

The shouting match was apparently sparked by the president’s disdain with Cassidy for joining three other Republicans in a critical vote to curb Trump’s wartime powers.

To be clear, while Trump is clearly not happy with Cassidy, it’s unlikely there’s much warmth going in the other direction.

Cassidy had lost his primary bid to the Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow in May, per Politico.

Whichever way the venom was flowing, it apparently was flowing — and that’s according to eyewitness accounts.

“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,” Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who was an OB/GYN before becoming an elected official, said. “Voices were raised… I think the vote yesterday on the War Powers Act, the president’s very disappointed.”

Sen. Marshall said Trump spent most of the time touting SAVE America Act

He said Trump is “very disappointed” with the war powers vote and it “was not a good discussion” between Trump and Cassidy

“sometimes two guys just have to get it off their chest” https://t.co/T0VKbbo0fR

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) June 24, 2026

According to Semafor congressional bureau chief Burgess Everett, Marshall also proffered the following explanation: “Sometimes two guys just have to get it off their chest.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy quipped: “The president was mad as a murder hornet about the War Powers vote.”

Indeed, according to quotes obtained by The Hill, it appears Trump and Cassidy were indeed less than pleased with each other at the meeting.

Cassidy said the spat began when Trump asked “why would anybody vote for the war powers” resolution to the Republicans.

“I stood and said, ‘Is that a rhetorical question or would you like to really know?’” Cassidy said.

When Trump asked for an answer, Cassidy says he responded with: “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.’”

“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 explained. “I matched his tone and his volume and it went back and forth.”

Cassidy claimed that Trump also tried to “demean” him with one of the president’s trademark verbal barbs.

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

When Trump was asked about it, he largely brushed the incident off.

“We had a really great meeting, and we’re very proud of the party. We like our leader. We like everybody. Really, in the room, we don’t like a few people, but that’s okay,” Trump said after the incident, and without dropping Cassidy’s name specifically.

He added: “For the most part, we had a really well unified party.”

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