If A Republican CROSSES Trump… Their Career Is OVER: Bill Cassidy Primary LOSS Reaction | Chuck Todd

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Hey, thanks for checking out the Chuck Todd Cast YouTube channel. Be sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss any of our updates.

[00:00:10]I cut my teeth covering campaign politics. So, we're going to lead with the events on Saturday night, which of course began on a February day in 2021, when Bill Cassidy was one of the more surprising um Republican senators to make the decision to vote to convict Donald Trump um for high crimes and misdemeanors.

[00:00:37]It was a vote.

[00:00:39]Bill Cassidy won re-election in 2020.

[00:00:43]Um and so it was a vote that was politically a gamble it looks like at the time and there was a lot of questions about it and people knew it was going to upset a lot of base Republicans. It upset a lot of base Republicans at the time.

[00:00:57]Um I think many of us assumed it was going to age well.

[00:01:01]Sadly, it did not age well uh as far as the Republican Party is concerned. And we will get into that there.

[00:01:08]Um But one of the things that I want to Look, it is not news that a closed Republican primary is going to favor Donald Trump endorsed candidates.

[00:01:21]It is not news that any sort of right now that the So, Donald Trump's political standing is incredibly weak, but it is still strong within his own party.

[00:01:32]Uh we're going to get another test of this Tuesday night in Kentucky where we'll have Ed Gallrein and Thomas Massie facing off in that primary.

[00:01:41]Uh and look, even a even a Massie victory is not going to um I I think be an indication to me that Donald Trump is losing his grip on the Republican Party. If Massie wins, I I think at this point, I mean, look, he's the Indiana primaries show that, you know, what Trump says goes.

[00:02:03]Uh we saw what happened. He was able to take a candidate that arguably probably ideologically was the least mega of the three, Cassidy included.

[00:02:13]Uh and in Julia Letlow, uh and he got her into the runoff, in many ways the uh third candidate in that race.

[00:02:22]Um uh may very well have been the the the more he's been arguing that he is closer to Trump and mega um than Julia Letlow is, but he don't have any money.

[00:02:34]If John Fleming got a bunch of money and ran a campaign trying to paint Julia Letlow as uh too liberal for the Republican Party, uh I guess in theory he could could pull off that runoff, but I don't think so at this point. I think Donald Trump is not going to back down uh back off of that endorsement since he accomplished what he really wanted to accomplish, which was punish uh yet another um to punish yet another person who voted to either impeach or convict him. And we should go through this a little bit. There are now only three people left in Congress who voted to eat a Republicans who voted to either impeach Donald Trump or to convict Donald Trump. Susan Collins, and she could very well lose uh the general election.

[00:03:23]Uh in uh in fact at this point and I would make her a slight underdog to win re-election. You got David Valadao whose district has been rema- uh rearranged uh by the uh aggressive California gerrymander in response to the Texas aggressive Texas uh gerrymander.

[00:03:40]Uh allowed David Valadao has been a survivor. Uh this is going to be the his toughest test yet, so he may go down.

[00:03:46]Um and it so it's possible come January 3rd, 2027 that there will only be one person left in the house or the Senate that voted to either impeach Donald Trump for his actions on January 6th or to convict Donald Trump for his actions on January 6th.

[00:04:03]And that would be Lisa Murkowski. She's the only person that's guaranteed to be there. Bill Cassidy lost a primary. Dan Newhouse decided to retire.

[00:04:12]He of course survived every challenge but decided to retire. Don't forget why did he survive in Washington state?

[00:04:18]They don't have partisan primaries.

[00:04:20]Mitt Romney retired.

[00:04:22]I think all of us are curious if he had run for re-election in 2024. I think I think he could have won that, but we shall see. Ben Sasse resigned to take over the presidency at the University of Florida.

[00:04:34]Peter Meijer lost a Republican primary.

[00:04:37]Jaime Herrera Beutler lost a Republican primary. This is to Joe Kent and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. MGP is a major figure in the future of the Democratic Party because of this. Liz Cheney of course lost her primary. Tom Rice South Carolina Republican House member lost his primary. Richard Burr voted to convict. He was already retiring. Pat Toomey voted to convict.

[00:05:02]He was already retiring. Adam Kinzinger retired um after voting to impeach him. John Katko retired after voting to impeach him in the house. Fred Upton retired after voting to impeach him in the house. And Anthony Gonzalez chose to retire after voting to impeach him in the house. What's interesting is Bill Cassidy has the second worst performing Republican in a primary of any of the impeachers or convictors. He ended up with 24.8% um only Tom Rice did worse at 24.6% in his primary in 2022.

[00:05:42]So it is not news that Republican primary voters who are Trump supporters were going to punish a Republican who chose to put character and ethics above loyalty to Donald Trump.

[00:05:58]Now, here's what we had did not see in any of these races except for Liz Cheney is none of these people ran and defended their vote. Bill Cassidy never defended his vote during this campaign.

[00:06:10]In fact, Bill Cassidy ought to be you know, he was pretty his concession speech was you know, certainly had a few jabs at the president understandably so.

[00:06:21]But Bill Cassidy got talked into running a race and sucking up to Donald Trump via Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and and the catastrophic mistake he made in voting to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because his vote to confirm was used as cover for a couple other people to vote to confirm. Had Cassidy uh voted against him in committee, Kennedy is not wreaking havoc on the public health world right now.

[00:06:47]But Bill Cassidy clearly got advice that said, "Oh, no, no, no. Do this, you know, and and and you can get your way back into the good graces of Donald Trump."

[00:06:55]Well, it's just whoever told him this. He ought to be very angry at his consultants who talked him into this.

[00:07:04]There was only two ways to go if he wanted to try to survive.

[00:07:12]One was to run as an indep- do what pull a Lisa Murkowski. Now, she went right in after the primary. He could do that, but he won't.

[00:07:21]And it's a I'm not sure it's a a viable option um in the way that the the the Senate race is shaping up in Louisiana.

[00:07:29]But what he could have done is quickly decided, "Look, I'm not going when when the when the governor decided to push the Republican-controlled legislature to change the rules of the primary in Louisiana to get rid of the all party primary which Louisiana has had for decades.

[00:07:47]And to go to a closed partisan primary situation.

[00:07:52]Semi-closed. Yes, supposedly independents could vote, but according to Cassidy and his campaign it was very difficult for some who were not registered Republicans to vote in this Republican primary.

[00:08:05]But if he really wanted to do First of all, he should have defended his vote.

[00:08:07]And second of all, if he'd run as an independent um and pledged that if he won, he was going to be with the Republicans, just like Lisa Murkowski did.

[00:08:18]But he chose not to do that. He chose to try to curry favor with Donald Trump. To run a campaign that claimed he was more of a supporter of Donald Trump than Julia Letlow was or more of a supporter of Donald Trump than John Fleming was.

[00:08:30]And it was it was so inauthentic.

[00:08:35]I do believe Bill Cassidy is a man of conviction, ethics, and morals. I do believe that he voted his conscience in February of 2021 when he chose to convict.

[00:08:46]But I remember when he did it at the time, he was afraid to talk about it. He did not want to go on a lot of places to talk about it. He put out a very uncomfortable video statement that some some could argue came across almost as a hostage video, but he was sort of like, "Look, I He knew he had to stand by his vote, explain his vote, and he wanted to move on."

[00:09:08]Um perhaps Cassidy thought that other Republicans in the Senate would have the guts to do this, but obviously Mitch McConnell did not have the guts to do this.

[00:09:21]And Mitch McConnell and neither did Rob Portman, and we can go through, you know, the votes were there um had it been a secret ballot.

[00:09:31]But many Republican senators didn't have the guts to do it.

[00:09:39]But I'm sure Cassidy's upset at how all this has played out.

[00:09:43]And, you know, when I advocated about 6 months ago that Cassidy really only had when when when Trump decided to do what he do, that Cassidy, if he really wanted to win re-election, there was only one path. That was independent.

[00:09:55]Um a friend of mine who's much better at digging into numbers than than anybody I know, um put together an analysis and just if of just some polling and and said that unfortunately because of Cassidy's decision to uh confirm Bobby Kennedy Jr., he lost all credibility with anybody in the middle or the left.

[00:10:16]And so he was a person on an island. He had alienated the Trump base with the vote to convict.

[00:10:22]And the path back to you know, to re-election would have been through independents, uh Republicans who care about ethics, morals, and character, which we now know is about looks like 25% of the Louisiana um Republican electorate.

[00:10:41]Uh and there was a path there, but he chose not to pursue.

[00:10:47]He chose not to pursue that path.

[00:10:50]And because he had alienated, there was just there was there was no way he did get to the point where there was no way for him to survive.

[00:10:59]But this is the lesson that folks ought to take away with this.

[00:11:03]If you take a tough vote, if you take a vote that's unpopular inside your own party, do you hide or do you own it?

[00:11:10]He chose to hide.

[00:11:11]He owned it when he would be asked about it, but he always wanted to move on from it.

[00:11:17]He voted to remove and ban Donald Trump from ever holding federal office again.

[00:11:24]And he never wanted to talk about it, and he wanted to move on.

[00:11:29]I think voters sniffed that out.

[00:11:32]I'd love to have seen an alternative history here.

[00:11:36]Where Bill Cassidy owned his vote, defended his vote, and ran on his vote.

[00:11:41]Ran as an independent when the Louisiana Republican Party literally changed the rules in order to target him in a primary.

[00:11:54]But his convictions clearly weren't deep enough to pursue that path.

[00:12:00]And so he thought, maybe I can curry favor with Donald Trump. Or perhaps some consultants who didn't want to advise him to leave the Republican Party for fear that that would cost them clients, chose to advise him, "No, no, no, we can get We We can win over Trump. We can at least keep him from endorsing."

[00:12:22]That was the initial plan. They could keep him from endorsing. They were never going to get him to endorse Cassidy, but they could keep him from endorsing.

[00:12:31]And he pursued that fantasy.

[00:12:34]And he made a fool of himself with the Kennedy stuff, and he knows he did.

[00:12:38]He's been uncomfortable with it the whole time. You can feel it. You can see it.

[00:12:43]And if people like us can feel it and see it, the voters saw it and smelled it and sniffed it out. This episode of the Chuck Toddcast is brought to you by Soul.

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