Welcome to our world…
Trump’s getting really steamed about the filibuster. Sure, he believes he can just order the world to his liking but he wants Republicans to have to bend the knee publicly to every crackpot, bullshit idea he comes up with. It will be interesting to see if they acquiesce to this as they’ve done with everything else:
President Trump’s Truth Social demands to end the filibuster are just a hint of his coming rampage if Senate Republicans hold out against him, advisers tell Axios.
Most Senate Republicans have no interest in nuking the filibuster. But Trump’s frustration is the first clear sign that the shutdown, which becomes a record on Wednesday, is getting to him.
- “He will make their lives a living hell,” one Trump adviser told Axios.
- “He will call them at three o’clock in the morning. He will blow them up in their districts. He will call them un-American. He will call them old creatures of a dying institution. Believe you me, he’s going to make their lives just hell,” the source continued.
- Another adviser emphasized: “He’s really mad about this.”
For weeks, Trump wasn’t paying close attention to the shutdown out of a belief that Democrats would eventually drop their demands.
- Now, he is starting to put Republican senators on blast for not changing the filibuster, which requires 60 votes for most legislation, arguing it gave Democrats leverage to shut down the government for a record amount of time.
- “The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks the filibuster outrageous and anti-democratic,” one of the advisers said.
- Trump was already steamed about the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition, which has allowed Democratic senators to block certain judicial nominees.
Some of the newer, populist Senate Republican voices are warming to the idea.
- Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) raised the idea of changing the filibuster to end the shutdown last month on Fox News, saying, “Let’s make this a Republican-only vote.”
- Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) expressed willingness to do away with the filibuster if needed. Hawley said if he’s “got to choose between feeding 42 million Americans who are needy and have to have federal food assistance to eat, or defending the arcane rules of the Senate — I’m going to choose those people.”
- Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) also told Axios he would be willing to change the filibuster rules “under certain circumstances.”
- Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said he understood Trump’s frustration, “but I think that Democrats are about to cave” by the end of the week. When pressed to clarify whether he opposed ending the filibuster, he responded, “I said what I just said.”
He wants every last one of them publicly lined up to kiss his ring.
The filibuster is the last excuse some of them have for not openly joining the fascist takeover. This would be the final capitulation.