One Republican senator believes that former President Donald Trump should drop out of the presidential race due to his ongoing legal problems but would still support the previous commander in chief if he got the nomination.
“I think so,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said in an interview Sunday morning on CNN’s State of the Union, after being asked whether Trump should end his campaign. “But obviously, that’s up to him. I mean, you’re just me asking my opinion. But he will lose to Joe Biden if you look at the current polls.”
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Trump has been indicted in four separate criminal cases this year. He was indicted in New York over a 2016 hush-money scheme, in Florida over his retention and handling of classified documents, in Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his subsequent actions in Washington D.C., and in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into his alleged efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
“If former President Trump ends up getting the nomination but cannot win a general [election], that means we’ll have four more years of policies which have led to very high inflation, to a loss of purchasing power for the average American equivalent to $10,000, and to many other things which I think have been deleterious to our future,” he explained.
The former president, who denies any wrongdoing, now must defend himself against a combined 91 federal and state criminal counts after an Atlanta grand jury indicted him and 18 co-defendants, including his final White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and former New York City Mayor and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, earlier this month, following a two-year investigation into his efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
Cassidy, who isn’t a lawyer, said he believes the classified documents case — in which Special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with 40 felonies that carry a maximum combined sentence of 450 years in jail, including 32 counts of willful retention of national defense information, violations of the Espionage Act — is the most serious case of Trump’s indictments.
The senator also indicated he’d vote for Trump, if he won the nomination, over Biden in a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, though he indicated his belief that Biden would win a second term if Trump gets convicted.
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“I’m going to vote for a Republican,” Cassidy said.
“I think Joe Biden needs to be replaced, but I don’t think Americans will vote for someone who’s been convicted,” the Louisiana senator explained, adding, “I’m a Republican. I think any Republican on that stage in Milwaukee would do a better job than Joe Biden and so I want one of them to win,” he said, referencing the first GOP presidential candidate debate set to take place on Wednesday.
