Trump Successfully Boots Sen. Bill Cassidy From His Seat

The Republican primary race for Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-LA) Senate seat is headed to a runoff next month. But Cassidy won’t be a part of it.

The two-term senator went down in defeat Saturday to two MAGA challengers, Rep. Julie Letlow (R-LA) and Louisiana state treasurer and former congressman John Fleming.

None of the candidates in the competitive three-way race received the majority of the votes needed to avoid a runoff.

At the time the AP called the race, just before 11 p.m. ET, Letlow had 44.9 percent of the vote, leading the pack, while Fleming received 28.4 percent. Cassidy trailed behind with just 24.6 percent of the votes.

The top two candidates, Letlow and Fleming, will now face off in a runoff scheduled for June 27.

“When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to. But you don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim the election was stolen, you don’t find a reason, you don’t manufacture some excuse,” Cassidy said in a concession speech Saturday. “You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you’ve had that privilege, and that’s what I’m doing right now.”

Trump took credit for his loss on Truth Social. “Bill Cassidy, after falsely using his ‘relationship’ with me during his political career, and winning Elections because of it, voted to impeach me on preposterous charges that were fake then, and now, are criminally insane!” he wrote. “His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!”

The race for the Republican nomination for the Louisiana Senate seat has been one of the most closely watched and competitive contests ahead of this year’s midterms.

The dynamic was, in part, created by President Donald Trump’s aggressive dislike of Cassidy, which dates all the way back to the senator’s decision to vote to impeach Trump during his second impeachment trial in the Senate following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

That was seemingly the start of a souring relationship that never really recovered. In 2023, as Trump faced criminal charges from four separate indictments, Cassidy called for him to drop out of the Republican primaries for the 2024 presidential race. 

In January of this year, Trump endorsed Letlow for the Senate seat Cassidy currently holds — a seat Letlow had not yet announced she was running for. Days later, Letlow got into the race. 

The congresswoman also received Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s (R) endorsement.

Letlow currently represents Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District. She was elected during a special election after her husband, former Rep.-elect Luke Letlow, died from COVID-19 complications in late 2020 — just before he was set to be sworn in. Letlow later won the special election to serve out the rest of her late husband’s term and has been in Congress since then. Letlow is the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in the House.

Louisiana treasurer Fleming, who was a White House deputy chief of staff during Trump’s first term, reportedly tried to reach out to Trump for his endorsement but was blocked by the president’s aides. He later spoke with Trump in February after Trump endorsed Letlow, according to the Washington Post.

“I said to him, ‘Why don’t you let me be your Plan B?’” Fleming said in an interview with the Post.

Trump’s choice to back Letlow and replace Cassidy was not based entirely on the Louisiana senator’s impeachment vote. After calling for Trump to drop out of the 2024 race, Cassidy also refused to endorse him. 

More recently, the Louisiana senator, a gastroenterologist and the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) Committee, has been publicly clashing with Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the broader MAHA movement.

Cassidy, a staunch advocate for childhood vaccinations, has been publicly vocal about his disagreements with Kennedy on several decisions the HHS secretary has made since his confirmation.

Prior to his confirmation, Kennedy assured Cassidy that he would maintain the recommendations from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without any changes. It was a promise that swayed Cassidy to ultimately support Kennedy’s HHS nomination. But in June, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the ACIP and replaced them with individuals of his own choosing, including some vaccine skeptics.

Kennedy also promised Cassidy that he would not remove statements on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website that stated unequivocally that vaccines do not cause autism. But the site was updated in November to suggest, without evidence, that possible links between vaccines and autism were “ignored.” Cassidy was quick to denounce the changes. 

The Louisiana senator has also been vocal about Kennedy and his team’s significant and damaging revisions to the childhood vaccine schedule, reducing the number of routine shots dramatically, and the push to link the use of Tylenol by pregnant women to autism in kids. 

And, just last month, Trump had to pull his nominee for the U.S. surgeon general — MAHA-backed Casey Means — after she was questioned on her stance on vaccines, as well as her lack of experience, during her confirmation hearing.
Trump and Means’ brother, Calley Means, a health adviser to the Trump administration, blamed Cassidy for tanking the nomination.