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Trump tore into Senate Republicans in behind-the-scenes confrontation that changed everything

June 25, 2026 | | Print Article

Hours after President Donald Trump tore into Senate Republicans during a private meeting on Wednesday, the lower chamber finally voted in his favor.

The Senate specifically voted 47-50-1 late that evening to prevent Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine’s war powers resolution from moving forward.

The president celebrated the vote with a post to Truth Social in which he noted that Republican Sens. Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy had switched sides:

According to ABC News, the resolution, “which aims to limit Trump’s ability to wage war in Iran but does not have the force of law, had narrowly advanced in a previous procedural vote” hours earlier, triggering Trump’s temper.

The president then invited Senate Republicans to a closed-door meeting that turned contentious when Sen. Cassidy objected to Trump’s complaints.

“[A]s they stood face to face in a Wednesday meeting at the Capitol, the two Republicans unleashed anger at each other in a shouting match in front of dozens of their Senate GOP colleagues,” as reported by CNN.

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According to Cassidy, the exchange began when the president demanded to know why several senators, including him, had voted in favor of the war powers resolution during the prior procedural vote.

“I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on,'” Cassidy later recalled. “It [the Iran War] 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.”

Trump subsequently “lost his temper,” according to the senator, at one point even ordering Cassidy to sit down. When the senator reportedly refused, the president called him a “lunatic.”

Cassidy later accused the president of trying to bully him:

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After the first vote but before the second vote, the president took to Truth Social to complain about Cassidy and his peers.

“So, I have Iran on the ‘ropes,’ ready to go down for the fall, willing to give us practically anything, and for the first time in decades, respecting the hell out of the United States and its President, ME, and the U.S. Senate decides to have a poorly timed and meaningless War Powers Act Vote, telling the Number One Sponser of Terror in the World that the United States doesn’t like what I am doing to them, and I must stop, and by so doing has provided aid and comfort the Enemy,” he wrote.

“Four Republican Losers voted with the Dumocrats, and Iran asked my people, ‘what does that all mean?’ These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done!” he added.

Sometime between when this was posted and the second vote, Paul and Cassidy changed their votes. Cassidy attributed this change to a meeting he had with Vice President JD Vance.

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“I want to thank Vice President Vance and Special Envoy Witkoff for the thorough briefing this afternoon on Iran,” the senator tweeted late Wednesday. “I appreciate the quick invitation to the White House to address many of my concerns.”

Paul, meanwhile, maintained in a tweet that his position on the matter remains the same, though he changed his vote from a “yay” to “present.”

Vivek Saxena
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