A top Republican senator cast doubt on former President Donald Trump‘s ability to win a general election.
“I don’t think Trump can win a general election,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said on CNN’s State of the Union. “If past his prologue, that means President Trump is going to have a hard time in those swing states, which means that he cannot win a general election.”
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Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment prompted by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. He was asked about a recent quote from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) reportedly suggesting that Trump can’t win.
“You have basically three people at this point that are credible in this whole thing,” DeSantis reportedly told donors last week. “Biden, Trump, and me. And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president — Biden and me, based on all the data in the swing states.”
“That’s a nice way for him to dis people like Tim Scott, who’s a pretty formidable candidate,” Cassidy quipped about DeSantis’s remarks.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) filed paperwork last week for a presidential run and is expected to make an announcement Monday. DeSantis is also rumored to file paperwork for a 2024 bid this week, according to multiple reports. A spokesperson declined to confirm those reports to the Washington Examiner.
Scott appears to be the only sitting Republican senator poised to throw his hat in the 2024 ring. At the moment, Trump is the Republican front-runner.
“During the last election cycle, we saw that, in all the swing states, almost all, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona, that Trump’s — that the candidates for Senate that Trump endorsed all lost. If you had taken the votes that went to other Republicans and put them together, those Republicans would have won,” Cassidy noted.
Cassidy also criticized top contenders in the 2024 arena for shying away from entitlement reform. Recently, the senator has embarked on a renewed push to address Social Security. Cassidy is leading a working group with Sen. Angus King (I-ME) to craft solutions aimed at averting Social Security insolvency.
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“If you have a leading presidential candidate, be it Joe Biden, who clearly is saying that, or Donald Trump pretending to the American people that there’s no problem with Social Security, then they lack the leadership to become the president of the United States,” Cassidy chided. “There’s no leadership like that from Trump or Biden.”
A projection from the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the program’s Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance trust funds will be depleted by 2033 and 2048, respectively.
