President Donald Trump raged at rogue Republicans during an evening in the White House Rose Garden after his beloved voting bill was left in limbo.
Trump, 80, invited members of Congress to the White House for dinner on Tuesday, ahead of a looming two-week break in July.
However, the al fresco event took a turn when the president reportedly grew frustrated with his flailing voting-regulation bill, the Save America Act, which he has now attempted to “Frankenstein” with another unrelated bill to get it passed.
On Tuesday, Republican hardliners blocked Speaker Mike Johnson’s plan to merge Trump’s Save America Act with the annual defense policy bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, before sending it over to the Senate.
Fourteen Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, voted against moving forward with Trump’s plan. Scalise, from Louisiana, switched his vote in a procedural move so that leadership can bring up the measure again.
Despite Johnson’s offer to work over the coming days to resolve differences within the party over how to advance election legislation, GOP leaders canceled planned votes for Wednesday and Thursday and sent lawmakers off on their July Fourth recess early. The House is set to return on July 13.
Johnson said the rebellion was “not helpful,” and called it “frustrating.”
“We had some Republicans who decided that they didn’t want to advance the rule this week,” Johnson told reporters. “What they did was they impeded and stopped the progress of the week. It is not helpful. We’re moving really important legislation for the people, and we don’t have time to waste.”
Trump’s dinner began at 7 p.m. Tuesday on the patio where the historic Rose Garden was paved over. The event allowed the president to vent about the day’s proceedings. A full guest list has not been released, and the event was closed to the press.
Punchbowl News reporter Jake Sherman said at the dinner that Trump was “very frustrated” with the Republicans who voted down the rule, noting it was a “stupid vote” and that the GOP should stick together.
Sherman added that Trump referred to the House Freedom Caucus, the powerful congressional bloc of conservative and far-right Republican members in the House of Representatives, as the “3 O’Clock caucus.”
“Three o clock caucus votes down rules,” Sherman quoted Trump as saying on on X. “It’s a stupid vote. They stick together. So should we.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
NewsNation White House correspondent Libbey Dean posted a video on X on Tuesday evening in which loud noises could be heard coming from the South Side of the White House.
Republican hard-liners, including Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, argued against merging the two separate bills. She called Johnson’s plan to combine the bills “a procedural head fake,” arguing it would be easier for the Senate to strip out the elections provisions.
“What my amendment would do is it would put it into the text of the bill, then they would have to file the amendment specifically to strip voter ID plus proof of citizenship,” Luna told reporters.
Republican Rep. Tom Burchett, who is also holding out his vote, said the onus isn’t just on the Senate, where the Save America Act does not have the support to achieve the 60-vote threshold it needs to advance in the upper chamber, or even simple majority support.
“Until we’ve exhausted every avenue, it’s still our issue,” Burchett said.
