Bill Cassidy's Inevitable Fall

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA)

Donald Trump is not a politician who is easily predictable.  The man is currently complaining why he never won the Nobel Peace Prize while literally having an armed militia going through and illegally arresting his own citizens (and threatening to go to war over Greenland with some of his country's most historically loyal allies).  In fact, if you wanted to use the word "insane" to describe him, I'd allow you to use that word without having an MD.  But there is one thing that virtually every person who has ever crossed his path can say without fail: he will find a way to screw you over if you try to placate him.

We have seen this countless times, with everyone from Elon Musk to Mitt Romney to Chris Christie who have attempted to placate Trump and have ended up the lesser for it.  It's almost inevitable in every relationship he's had (it's why perhaps the only friendship he seems to have maintained for an extended period of time was with Jeffrey Epstein, a man who probably was blackmailing him given how much the Trump administration is slow-walking his criminal files).  The list of people who have gotten away with mixing with Trump and gotten exactly what they wanted are few-and-far-between.  There's Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who ended up Governor of Arkansas for her troubles.  There's Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump, who spent the first administration of Ivanka's father setting up business connections that will ensure she doesn't have to fight for a spot in his will like her four siblings.  And then there's Stephen Miller, who has gotten everything he could ever dream of in the second administration...but given he's still in office, so I doubt he's out of the woods yet.

And that's about it.  Everyone else ended up, at best, barely scraping by, and at worst, became national punchlines like Sean Spicer or having a literal angry mob headed toward them like Mike Pence.  Which brings us to Sen. Bill Cassidy, who this weekend found out that nothing will get you into Trump's good graces forever, as Trump endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow before she even announced she was running for the Senate as Cassidy attempts to win a third term this November in Louisiana.

For those with short memories wondering why Trump might do this, you have to recall what Bill Cassidy did in between the Trump administrations.  Cassidy was an ardent Trump supporter in 2016 & 2020, but after the terrorist attacks on the US Capitol on January 6th, when Trump supporters attempted to stop the counting of the electoral college, Cassidy was publicly horrified.  He said that those who did this should be tried for sedition, and was one of only seven Republicans to vote to impeach Trump for his involvement with the attacks.  Cassidy would later refuse to endorse Trump in 2024.

But Trump won in 2024 without Cassidy's help, and the senator realized pretty quickly that he needed to make amends with Donald Trump if he ever wanted a chance at another term.  And so he did what so many before him had done-tried to get on Trump's good side by doing something he clearly didn't want to do.  In this case, Cassidy, a medical doctor and a lifelong advocate for immunizations, decided to vote for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be HHS Secretary.  Cassidy had the ability to slow-walk, and potentially even tank the nomination if he were to vote with the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee to not recommend the nomination.  Cassidy also had the ability to push for Kennedy to be rejected on the floor of the Senate.  It's easy to see a world where Cassidy (joining with the Democrats and Mitch McConnell, the only Republican to ultimately vote against Cassidy), might've woken up Susan Collins & Lisa Murkowski, and the three of them banding together would say they wouldn't back an anti-vaxxer to run the nation's health system.  But Cassidy instead sought worthless assurances from Kennedy that he would not change immunization schedules (which he would do within a week of confirmation), and has since thrown the entire country's immunization system at risk.  The greatest medical advancement in the history of the world, Bill Cassidy was willing to throw it away in hopes of it getting him on Donald Trump's good side.

But of course, that was never going to work, because there's only one MAGA absolute: Trump is the only person who gets to win.  Trump's active endorsement against Cassidy is coupled with the very real possibility that he'll push for a MAGA challenger to Susan Collins should she run (Collins, like Cassidy, voted to impeach Trump), and even John Cornyn (Trump has refused to endorse Cornyn...who has almost completely backed him but Trump doesn't view as loyalist enough when he has an option like Ken Paxton...if this goes to a primary runoff I wouldn't be surprised if Trump decided to endorse Paxton outright).  Cassidy could've gone down a hero (albeit a tarnished one), admitting at the age of 68 that he was never going to win another term, and fought to preserve the medical oath he took on a Baton Rouge campus many moons ago.  Instead, he's just another one of Trump's victims...and like all of his victims, the rest of us suffer because he couldn't see the devil in plain sight.