Cassidy’s Tears, Blanche’s Confirmation

Bill Cassidy got choked up on the Senate floor. Actually choked up. The man who represents Louisiana until he doesn’t anymore stood there with trembling lip and misty eyes and said he felt “so privileged” to cast the vote that put Donald Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer in charge of the Justice Department. He read history books as a boy, he said. He thought about the great decisions of the Senate. And then he handed the nation’s top law enforcement job to a man whose entire career trajectory is “whatever Donald Trump needs today.”

Funny how the guys who talk the most about principle always end up doing exactly what the party bosses need them to do. Cassidy voted to impeach Trump in 2021. Trump endorsed his primary opponent, Rep. Julia Letlow, and Cassidy got bounced in May. So here he is, a senator with no future, no constituency, and nothing left to lose, casting the decisive 50th vote to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general. Ask yourself who benefits from a lame duck with nothing on the line being the swing vote on the most consequential DOJ nomination in a generation.

Ambassador of the United States of America to the People's Republic of China (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Cassidy went on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday to explain himself, and what an explanation it was. Margaret Brennan asked him point blank whether he was confident Blanche would uphold the Constitution during the midterm elections. His answer? “There’s always this existential anxiety.” Then a pause. Then: “I am as confident as you can be about the future as you are. I cannot predict the future, and this is not a black or white decision.”

Existential anxiety. That’s what the man said. Not “yes.” Not “I trust him.” He said he has existential anxiety and then voted yes anyway. In what world is that leadership? In what world is that anything other than a guy who cut a deal and needs to dress it up in philosophy so it doesn’t sound like what it is?

Here’s what actually happened. Blanche, as acting attorney general, created a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of a settlement over Trump’s leaked tax returns. That money was earmarked for Trump allies, including January 6 rioters Trump pardoned. Let that sink in. The attorney general of the United States set up a pipeline to pay people who stormed the Capitol. Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina had enough problems with this that Blanche had to rescind the directive to get their votes. Cassidy says he trusted Cornyn’s judgment that the fund is “effectively dead.”

Gage Skidmore (BY-SA) via wikimedia

Effectively. That’s a swamp word if I’ve ever heard one. Not “dead.” Not “eliminated.” Effectively dead. Meaning: dead until someone figures out how to bring it back through a side door. And Trump has already said publicly he’d like to revive it. But sure, let’s all feel better because John Cornyn, a man who has spent his entire career in the Senate leadership structure, gave it his blessing.

Cassidy even admitted the settlement gave Trump’s family immunity from future IRS audits, and he called that “totally wrong.” Said it “almost weighed to vote no.” Almost. He identified a corrupt deal that shields a president’s family from tax enforcement, called it wrong on national television, and then voted yes because he talked to some U.S. attorneys in Louisiana who said Blanche is doing good work. That’s the trade-off. Your constitutional protections for some drug prosecutions in Baton Rouge.

Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

And nobody seems to want to talk about what Blanche has actually been doing since he took over from Pam Bondi, who was fired for not being aggressive enough in pursuing Trump’s voting agenda. Under Blanche, the DOJ has been defending Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting, demanding private voter files from states, and threatening to prosecute local election officials who don’t comply. Courts and voting experts have called it intimidation. Blanche has refused to rule out federal agents at the polls in November. Ty Cobb, Trump’s own former White House counsel, warned on Saturday that Blanche would “more eagerly facilitate” any attempt by Trump to contest the midterms than Bill Barr did in 2020.

So the question isn’t whether Cassidy’s decision was black or white. The question is why a man who knows better, who said the immunity deal was wrong, who admitted to existential anxiety about the Constitution, still pulled the lever. The answer is the same answer it always is in that building. Someone made him an offer, someone whispered the right names in his ear, and the gradation of gray turned out to be exactly the color the swamp needed it to be.

Cassidy will be gone soon. Blanche will not. And the rest of us get to live with what that gray produced.