Trump's Lunch With Senators Turns Into Shouting Match

President Trump's latest visit to Capitol Hill was anything but calm, according to people inside the room. Sources tell CNN that a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans on Wednesday erupted into a loud confrontation between the president and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana over Trump's handling of Iran and a recent Senate move to curb his war powers. Trump was described as angry over the war powers vote, and he and Cassidy reportedly shouted over each other as Cassidy criticized Trump's actions on Iran and Trump fired back. At one point, Trump told Cassidy to sit down and called him a "lunatic," a source said.

• "I stood and said, 'You have not told the American people what's going on. It 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," Cassidy said after the meeting, per the Hill.

"He did not particularly care for my comments, raised his voice. I lost my temper, that's not appropriate—it's the Irish in me," said Cassidy who has increasingly broken with Trump and the party after losing a primary to a Trump-endorsed challenger. "I matched his tone and his volume and it went back and forth." He said Trump insulted him over his primary loss. What does President Trump say? 'Oh, you lost the election,' that sort of thing, whatever comes to mind to demean another person." Cassidy said he eventually sat down as the senator next to him tried to "de-escalate" the situation.

Other Republicans played it down publicly—Sen. Tommy Tuberville called it a "difference of opinion," while Sen. Jon Husted labeled the exchange "memorable." Insiders say Trump also slammed Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul, who sided with Cassidy on the war powers vote, along with Sen. Dave McCormick, who missed the vote because he was campaigning with Trump, Mediaite reports. Afterward, Trump told reporters the GOP was a "really well-unified party," and it was a "really great meeting," adding that he doesn't "like a few people but that's okay, I think you know who they are."

• The meeting happened soon after Trump abruptly called off the signing of a bipartisan housing bill that passed the Senate 85-5 earlier this week. Sen. John Cornyn told reporters that Trump closed the meeting by talking about unity, but "he spent the entire hour talking about things which were not exactly unified."