GOP senator rejects Trump as leader of Republican Party

GOP Senator Bill Cassidy has rejected former US President Donald Trump as the leader of the Republican Party and said the party should shift away from his influence in the future, following an unsatisfactory performance of several candidates Trump supported in the recent midterm elections.

Cassidy said on Saturday that he rejects “the premise that he’s the leader of the Republican Party” and noted that the Republican Party could elect a new leader.

“The Republican Party does not have a president in the office right now,” Cassidy said. “It does not have anybody who’s obviously not my leader.”

Trump has been under fire from within the GOP after the November 8 elections turned into a “complete disappointment" for the Republican Party.

Trump is seen as largely to blame for the Republicans’ disappointing performance in the vote.

Following the midterm elections on November 8, the Republican Party failed to win control of the Senate and underperformed in races across the country. The Democrats would control the Senate, and Republicans would win the House of Representatives.

Republicans are questioning whether Trump should continue as the party’s leader and pointing to his toxic political message as the common thread woven through three consecutive lackluster election cycles.

Trump announced a 2024 presidential bid last month and has since faced criticism for new controversies.

A majority of American voters in a recent poll said Trump should definitely not run for the White House again.

Cassidy had voted to convict Trump after the House impeached him for a second time after the January 6, 2021 protest march at the Capitol.

Cassidy on Saturday urged the Republican Party to “speak about the future” rather than fixating on issues in the past.

“We’re led by principles. We’re led by kind of concepts,” Cassidy said. “A right of center party which thinks that smaller government, that individual responsibility, that free markets is more likely to bring prosperity to a family and prosperity to our country. … If we are responsible to those principles, then we win.”

Trump has said that the January 6, 2021 protest represented "the greatest movement in the history of our Country,” when thousands of people marched against the certification of the 2020 election which placed Joe Biden in office as the current US president.

Trump claimed that he won the 2020 presidential election and that there was "massive" voter fraud.

Polls shows voters describe Trump as biggest loser of midterm elections

Voters and Republican operatives alike name Donald Trump as the biggest, citing the recent losses in the midterm elections by candidates endorsed by the former president.

On January 6, 2021, Trump supporters occupied the US Capitol while lawmakers were in the process of reviewing the certification of state electors which indicated Biden's victory. Some Trump supporters had hoped that this process could have resulted in some of the electors being disqualified, thus overturning the outcome of the presidential election.

It is claimed by some that the demonstrators were infiltrated and incited by provocateurs from US intelligence agencies, who orchestrated the “false flag operation” in order to get rid of Trump.

Some among the crowd clashed with police, and some made threats to beat up a number of Democratic lawmakers. Some also inflicted damage on parts of the Capitol building.

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