MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell blasted a pair of Senate Republicans after he said they were “successfully bullied” into switching their votes on an Iran war powers resolution following a contentious meeting with President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted to advance a resolution that would give Congress the ability to halt the president’s war. However, when a nearly identical vote came up the next day, Cassidy rejected the effort and Paul changed his vote to “present.”

On Thursday’s “The Last Word,” O’Donnell noted that the senators’ apparent change of heart came only after the president reportedly berated Republicans during a closed-door GOP luncheon in the Capitol earlier in the day.

“These are the cowardly lions, and they are succumbing to the most cowardly lion of all the Republican cowardly lions: Donald Trump himself,” he said. “The cowardly lions all sat there yesterday, letting Donald Trump yell at them while they were trying to eat the luncheon sandwiches.”

The MS NOW host also said: “Bill Cassidy, who said yesterday he could not be bullied by Donald Trump, was successfully bullied by Donald Trump into switching his vote. As was Rand Paul, the faux libertarian member of the Senate, who now thinks Donald Trump should be allowed a free hand in waging a foreign war without congressional authorization, something Rand Paul did not think until Donald Trump yelled at him yesterday.”

O’Donnell theorized why he thought Cassidy, who lost his Republican primary in May to a Trump-backed opponent, switched his vote, saying the outgoing Louisiana senator likely has “high hopes of earning a Washington income for the next, oh, 10 or more years.”

“Former senators are worth a lot of money in the lobbying business in Washington, but not if they are shunned by their own party, which Bill Cassidy obviously fears now,” he said. “And so next year, if Bill Cassidy remains a known enemy of Donald Trump, he would not be hired as a lobbyist by anyone in Washington.”

O’Donnell contended that this embarrassing reversal will continue to haunt the senators for years to come.

“For the Republicans who have put the United States Senate in Donald Trump’s service, there is nothing but living the rest of their lives in disgrace,” he said.

You can watch O’Donnell’s full commentary in the clip at the top of the page.

The post Lawrence O’Donnell blasts GOP ‘cowardice’ after senators cave to Trump on war powers vote appeared first on MS NOW.

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From MS Now.