Bulwark Takes - Trump Shivs Sen. Bill Cassidy

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

JVL, Sam Stein, and Joe Perticone give their takes on how Trump abruptly endorsed a primary challenger to Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy. Even after Cassidy bent over backward to confirm RFK Jr., Trump still decided it was time to end him.

Hey Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and check out our newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show. Only at BetMGM. Access to the Price is right fortune pick is only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,

please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, everyone. I'm JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Sam Stein and Joe Perticoke. And over the weekend, big news for the leopards. They found some more faces to eat. We got word from the White House that the present of these United States was eager to endorse a primary challenger to Senator Bill Cassidy. And you say run, Julia, run. And then today we get word that Representative Julia Letlow has an announced that she is challenging Senator Bill Cassidy, who's running for his third term down in Louisiana, because I guess sacrificing yourself and voting for RFK to become HHS secretary and

humiliating yourself, that wasn't enough. It didn't work. Sam, before we go to Joe, I know we're supposed to feel bad about this. And we're supposed to feel, because Bill Cassidy did vote for impeachment. Can't take that away from him. He is one of the more responsible people. He spoke very sternly to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And extracted some very important concessions from him,

which he waved his piece of paper. You know, we will have vaccines in our time. And, you know, like, he's probably better than your median MAGA senator would be. And yet I can't feel anything except for contempt for him. And I'm kind of openly for the Magas.

Tell me I'm wrong. Well, I don't think you're wrong. I think your motivation is maybe a little bit harsher than mine, but I think your analysis is very astute. I feel like I come out of this thinking that Bill Cassidy had

contempt for his own voters in a variety of ways, right? One was that he made a calculation that they were robs in that ultimately they only cared about one thing, which was, would Donald Trump support him? And he might be right about that. But it also is him judging his voters by saying these people have no real intellectual foundation, no way to think independently about the issues.

It all comes down to whether or not Trump will back me or at least stay out of this. The other way that he should contempt for his own voters is that he assumed that they would be fine with horrific public health outcomes because they value politics more than public health. And he made that calculation. He decided I'm willing to sacrifice the health and well-being for a lot of Americans because the people who elect me down in Louisiana care more about whether I'm aligned with Robert F. Kennedy and Maha and Trump than they do about measles. And that is a form of contempt for your voters as well. But are you saying that he's wrong to have contempt for his voters, Sam? I'm sorry, I'm confused here.

I'm not saying he's wrong or right. I just think he has contempt for his voters. I think he thinks low of his. I think he doesn't think highly of his voters. Right. As an analytical matter, do you think he's correct that for his voters it would really only matter that he was right with Trump and they really do prefer to have measles? Yeah, this is a million dollar question.

I know you've waited on this a lot. I can't quite bring myself to say that he is correct yet. He may be proven correct. I would like to think that there would be a path. at some point in time for even a Republican in Louisiana to say, you know what? I actually don't think we should bring back measles. And I actually think vaccines work.

And you're laughing. And, you know, I'm happy to be with Trump 95% in time. But yeah, I voted to convict the guy because of what happened in January 6th. Even if he said, I voted to convict him. We're four years on.

We're going to move past he's president now. Like, I do think there may have been like a way to do this that was more honest. and also showed a bit more respect for the people that elect him. But you probably disagree with that. Joe Perdicom, tell me about Representative Letlow, Lettlao. Letlow. So her husband died in 2020 of COVID.

That is not had any bearing on her behavior as a member of Congress at all. So if you think there's some kind of potential health-focused agenda for her, don't bet on it. For Cassidy, it's like, okay, he was pushing back in these very small statements. I remember asking him very early on about fluoride and RFK wanting to remove fluoride from the water. And he said, I agree with the dentist's association that fluoride's good. And I was like, great, then what? And there was nothing. And that's how it was with every single thing that RFK did.

It was, oh, this is, this is, you know, not sound policy. What are you going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. And there's been absolutely nothing. And so he hasn't done anything to counter in any meaningful way to, like, build a potential coalition there as like a lesser of two evils. He also hasn't done what was necessary to stop Trump from doing this to him, which was a full-throated change of personality like J.D. Vance did. So he really kind of invited this for himself. And someone like Susan Collins, who might invite something like this, though, is a much higher risk because she is crucial to the majority.

Like, all the members, all the senators who voted to convict, they will get this treatment eventually. Or they will find themselves out in not a part of the party anymore like Mitt. And so Letlow is, she has a great, she has a great path here to move into this. seat. So here's my question. What did Letlow do to earn Trump's endorsement so quickly? Was she the only one who was going to challenge Cassidy? Well, if you look at like the prominent, more prominent Louisiana Republicans, uh, it's Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise. These guys aren't running for Senate. These are house guys. Um, this is someone with a really young career. She came to Congress, uh, only a few years ago. She started in 2021. So like, she is there. She also hasn't car.

out a lane as being too risky like a Clay Higgins. Clay Higgins. Clay Higgins could not. Did. Oh, Clay Higgins went to statewide race. I was going to say, what if he chose to run? Yeah. Oh, my God.

I mean, and maybe he will. I think that, like, Trump endorsing Letlow right off the bat probably staves off someone like Clay Higgins jumping in, but, you know, if I see him tonight, I'll definitely ask him, would you consider running if this is now an open primary? It's not an open primary. Trump's already endorsed. Well, so here's my question. Is it, if you're Cassidy, do you want more people in then?

Like, you'd rather have a much more muddled field than just be mono-a-mano with Trump's preferred candidate. Louisiana will go to a runoff anyway. Oh, is it a jungle primary? No, no, it's like if he, if nobody clears more than 50 plus one in the primary, then they'll go to a runoff. So, like, it could be him versus let low twice. It could be, you know, like if Clay Higgins gets. in who does that take away from? I don't know.

Right. Wow. Well, so it's super interesting. Do you have thoughts, Joe, on Letlow herself as a commodity? I think she is a very normal rank and filer who just actually gets, is in the right place at the right time with the wrong man leading the party. And that all sucks for Bill Cassidy. And it's great for her because she can jump.

up a few rungs on the ladder very quickly. In terms of her being like, she doesn't have an impressive legislative record. She's not outspoken. I see her all the time, but I've never really spoken to her. Most reporters, she's not particularly front and center like a lot are. Maybe she's going to be a lot more now, but we'll see. You know what she should do? It should be the funniest thing.

It will never happen because it would cost her votes. She should run a campaign where she says, I have no personally the tragedy of infectious disease. husband died from him. And I, because of that, I believe that vaccines are good, even if we need to make sure that they're, you know, done correctly. What I don't like is the fact that we have now, you know, ushered in a new era of measles, thanks to Bill Cassidy. And she should just run like that and just torture him for what he did. She'll never do it, of course, but it would be very funny to watch. The easier path to her is to just say, like, Bill Cassidy is too woke to be in the Senate.

Too woke. He is not Trump. He's not Trump supportive enough. Louisiana voters are going to eat that right up. Louisiana Republican voters. Yeah. They'll eat that right up and she'll cruise. Hey, Joe, can Democrats vote in this primary?

Or is that one of these states where they can cross lines or no? I don't think so, but I'd have to check. So I got a quite for you guys. So the great tantalizing hope for all normies is Brian Kemp. right. Brian Kemp fought off a Trump-approved primary challenger. I think he's maybe not the only one, but kind of like one of only a handful of people. I can't think of other people who has successfully fought on. Who are the other ones? I don't know. I'm putting this all on the spot. But my question for you guys is, could Bill Cassidy be Brian Kemp?

Bill Cassidy lost his chance to be Brian Kemp. If he wanted to be Brian Kemp, he would have switched and ran for governor this cycle, and he would have gone full-throated against RFK and would have stuck to his principles and carved his lane as the next sane Republican red state governor. And he chose not to do it. And that's why he's in the situation. Yeah, I think there's some different, there's a differentiation between someone running for federal office and someone running for state office. Don't ask me why. But people just sort of view the governorship as just a different beast. It's why you get people like Andy Bescher winning in Kentucky, right? And if you're probably would never win a Senate race in Kentucky, but he can win the governorship in Kentucky. And I think that

applies to Brian Kemp, too. I think if Brian Kemp were to run for, you know, Senate against some MAGA Republican in Georgia, I don't know how he would fare. I honestly don't know. So I don't think Cassidy's got a bright future here. I would take the money that he doesn't emerge from this intact. But Joe's right. Had he, like, gone to some sort of statewide office? That probably would have been the smarter path. And that was the theory, too. was that maybe he was going to make this stand against RFK and carve out a link for governor. That was the kind of optimistic Aaron Sorkin-esque view of things. And I was like, no, he's going to ruin his life over this.

It doesn't work like that. Joe, what do you think the odds are that Cassidy sees some early polling and it looks really bad for him? And he just decides, I'm going to nope right out of here. I'm not going to get humiliated. I'm just going to retire and let them fight it out. Do you think the polling will be good enough to convince him to stay and fight it out or no? I would have thought he'd stick around until I saw Elise Stefaniq basically do the same thing, where she was just like, I'm screwed, I'm not running anymore.

However, it's a very short window, and I can't anticipate a lot of deep polling. If he gets some bad internals, if the NRSC gets bad internals and they say, look, you're screwed here, maybe. I find it highly unlikely, though there is a lot more time. It's not like Texas or something where the primary is a month sooner. So he does have time to decide whether or not it's worth it. And it's probably not worth it. Emotionally, Sam, what outcome gives you the most satisfaction, the most shameful joy? I am so beyond satisfaction.

It's like I can't even muster it up. Sam, plain is all we have left. I guess the most, okay, again, the most satisfying outcome is this. the most sad from like a personal level it would be if she ran against Cassidy and took him to task for ushering measles. That won't happen. The other outcome that would be interesting to me would be if Cassidy decides, you know what, I'm not going to out trump her.

I can at least try to maybe there's like a sliver of normies and maybe I can win over some indies and like I'm going to be conservative as hell, but I'm not going to like stand for some of the shit that Trump's doing. I'll make him myself more vocal. That will never happen either because we don't live in an Aaron Sorkin TV show. And so there's not really a satisfactory outcome here. I mean, obviously the Occam's Razor outcome is that he does exactly what Stefani does. The other Occam's Reeser Alcom is that he does what Liz Cheney does, which is endures it and then gets humiliated on election night.

Those are the outcomes. Neither are satisfactory. There's also the John Cornyn route where he says Ken Paxton is too woke and tied to the Clintons and tries to stick this thing out. I can't see that working. it will because because because trump has not won for him is not endorsed in texas remind you know trump is not endorsing paxton or hunter corn and he's just laying low and so that's different here and we'll ask last last question

getaway question uh cassidy had been telling his colleagues am i correct about this joe he had been saying that i've been told by people in the white house that they're going to stay neutral yeah do we think this is true that he was told by people in the white house that they were going to stay neutral do you think he was just bluffing with his colleagues to make it seem like he was, you know, to be able to be able to raise money and make it look like he was going to make a go of it, try to fake it until he'd make it. Do you think you got double crossed by people in the White House?

I don't doubt that he was probably told this by somebody, but it like, it just goes back to the original whole central theme of Trump, is that nothing actually matters or is concrete until Trump says it himself. That's does all that. I totally think he was told it. I totally think he was told it. And I think letlow probably was playing coy about going. in and then Trump, Trump, like, he operates on a whim. I'm sure he woke up one day, didn't like

something Bill Cassidy had said and was like, you know, fuck this guy. And that's that's that's just the way it works in this era. And I can tell you, people at the NRSC are probably losing sleep that Trump will impulsively do this to Susan Collins. Yeah, it's crazy. My gosh, they're not sleeping well. Boy, boy can dream. Boy, we got to end on a happy note. Wouldn't that be great? All right, Guys, thanks for being here. Listen, fam, hit like, hit subscribe. There's going to be more of this, more ritual humiliation, because here's the good thing.

Here's the silver lining in all of this. America is going to hell on a rocket sled. However, we will also get to see bad things happen to bad people. That's all we can get from this life. It's all, you know, perfect justice waits for the next life. Right now, we just got to revel in the shot in Freud. We'll see you next time. Good luck, America.

Later. Thank you.