President Donald Trump took one last shot at Senator Bill Cassidy as Louisiana headed to the polls on Saturday, urging voters to throw their support behind the incumbent Republican’s primary challenger.
“Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is a disloyal disaster,” the president wrote on Truth Social, noting that the two-term senator voted to impeach him after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots. “Bill Cassidy is a sleazebag, a terrible guy, who is BAD FOR LOUISIANA. Now he’s going to get CLOBBERED, hopefully, in today’s BIG election, by two great people!!!”
One of those people, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA), earned Trump’s endorsement shortly after entering the race in January. Letlow, who took office in April 2021 following the death of her husband, Congressman-elect Luke Letlow, has positioned herself as an America First lawmaker and attacked Cassidy from the right.
“In a state as conservative as ours, we shouldn’t have to wonder how our senator will vote when the pressure’s on,” Letlow wrote at the launch of her campaign. “Louisiana deserves conservative champions, leaders who will not flinch.” Letlow has since endorsed President Trump’s call for the Senate to eliminate the filibuster in order to pass the SAVE America Act, election integrity legislation that has stalled in the upper chamber.
Letlow also emerged as a supporter of Casey Means, a leading figure in the Make America Healthy Again movement and Trump’s nominee for surgeon general. Letlow slammed Cassidy for holding up Means’s nomination, calling on him to “stop dragging his feet, do his job, and help advance President Trump’s agenda.” Cassidy, a physician, opposed Means’s nomination given what he called her “promotion of vaccine skepticism.”
Cassidy questioned Robert F. Kennedy Jr. along those lines during the latter’s Senate hearing, before ultimately voting to confirm him as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He did not relent on Means, however, and Trump late last month pulled her nomination, steering more MAHA ire toward Cassidy.
Louisiana is not the only state where Trump has gotten involved in Republican primaries. The president threw his support behind Ed Gallerin, a retired Navy SEAL challenging Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). Massie’s criticism of the war in Iran and the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files put him firmly in the president’s crosshairs.
“The incredible people of Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, who want desperately to get rid of Thomas Massie, the Worst ‘Republican’ Congressman we have had in many years,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this month. Trump’s involvement raised the stakes considerably in the Kentucky race, which has now become the most expensive House primary in American history. Kentucky voters head to the polls on Tuesday.
Letlow has maintained a consistent lead in the polls. On primary day, the RealClearPolitics polling average had her 13 points ahead of Cassidy. Louisiana State Treasurer John Fleming trails Letlow by 8 points, but leads Cassidy by 3. A candidate must secure more than 50% of the vote in order to clinch the party’s nomination. If no candidate crosses that threshold, the top two candidates will head for a June 27 runoff.
The winner of Saturday’s primary will enter the general election with a heavy advantage over whichever candidate clinches the Democrat nomination, given Louisiana’s solid Republican tilt. Polls close at 8:00 p.m. ET.
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