Bill Cassidy

My first reaction — and that of many others, judging from the town square that is the modern internet — was that U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy’s heated Wednesday showdown with President Donald Trump must have felt cathartic.

The outgoing two-term senator, ousted by his own party’s primary voters after Trump put a great big target on his back, finally let the president have it during a testy closed-door lunch meeting, according to multiple sources, Cassidy included.

I’m not talking about the sort of indirect shaming that Cassidy served up in May when he failed to make this weekend’s runoff between Trump-endorsed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow and equally Trump-worshiping state Treasurer John Fleming. Back then, Cassidy took the high road and talked of the importance of accepting an election loss with grace. He didn’t say Trump’s name, but you couldn’t miss the intended contrast with the man he had voted to convict five years earlier for inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol rather than accepting defeat.

No, this time the confrontation was personal.

Trump made clear his displeasure with Cassidy and three other Republicans who, a day earlier, helped Democrats pass a largely symbolic measure calling on the administration to withdraw from hostilities with Iran — reportedly called them “losers” who gave aid and comfort to the enemy.

Cassidy pushed back, challenging Trump for the war’s disastrous outcome.

“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 told reporters.

He said Trump interrupted him and “I didn’t care to be interrupted. I felt like I was trying to get answers for the American people and I’m not going to be bullied when I’m trying to get answers for the American people.”

Things escalated. Trump reportedly called Cassidy a “lunatic.” Cassidy referred to Trump as his “brother,” prompting the president to deny such a relationship. The senator eventually calmed down and said he shouldn’t have let his “Irish temper” get the better of him.

And then came the head-spinning part. Cassidy reversed himself.

After being summoned to the White House to meet with Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff, he said he now understands the strategy; never mind that his initial complaint wasn’t about strategy but about Trump’s lack of communication with the public and the failure to land the promised outcome.

And then, when the Senate brought up a nearly identical measure to the one he’d opposed, he voted yes.

So what, exactly, are we supposed to make of how this story started, and where it ended?

You’d think Cassidy would own his new freedom, after having done nearly everything Trump wanted since his return to office to no avail. Remember when he let political ambitions override his professional medical judgment and helped give conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the power to undermine much of what he spent his prepolitics career fighting for? Those hoping for better out of him do.

Sure, he still sometimes pushes back against the president’s countless transgressions. The same eventful day all this happened, he joined with New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker to demand that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche explain the “extraordinary” immunity he granted the Trump family from civil and criminal liability.

But then he turns around and falls in line, just as he did when he still hoped to stop Trump from coming after him.

Maybe his about-face Wednesday was a sign he’d succumbed to the flattery of getting a coveted White House invitation.

Perhaps he was trying to smooth things over after the public outburst, hoping to win support for the substantive policy initiatives he still wants to achieve in his last months — even if it means lying down with those who forced him into his impending unwanted retirement.

It could be that he’s simply exhausted from having to navigate the depressing environment that all responsible Republicans in Washington find themselves in these days, caught between their own best judgment and a president who brooks no dissent no matter how bad his ideas or behavior.

It’s even possible that he was actually convinced that the rebuke from Congress hurts the country’s position as it tries to negotiate details of the conflict from what he well knows — and basically came out and said — is a position of weakness.

He’s not the only one who finds himself veering between trying to be a team player and going full resistance. John Cornyn of Texas, also taken out by a Trump-endorsed challenger in a GOP primary, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is not seeking reelection, are in pretty much the same boat these days.

But insisting he would not be bullied by Trump and then turning around and giving him exactly what he wants?

That’s some next-level flip-flopping — the kind I, for one, had hoped Cassidy had finally put behind him.