Hours after an Election Day shellacking for his party, President Donald Trump on Wednesday poured cold water on reports that Senate Democrats are moving toward reopening the government and urged Republican senators to nix a key Senate rule so the party can pass its own bills without opposition support.
“The Democrat radicals in the Senate have shown zero interest in reopening the government, and I don’t think they’ll act so soon. A lot of people disagree,” Trump said of the shutdown, which is now the longest in U.S. history.
“‘Yes, sir, they’re going to get it right now. We should have it done in a day.’ I’ve heard that about four times,” Trump said of prospects for a bipartisan deal. “I heard it after [the ‘No Kings’ rallies on Oct. 18]. … I heard it after a couple of other moments in time. And I said, ‘No, I don’t believe so.’ And now I heard it’s after the [Tuesday] election. I don’t believe so,” he said during a breakfast meeting with Republican senators at the White House.
“I think they’re kamikaze pilots,” Trump said, referring to congressional Democrats. “I just got back from Japan. I talked about the kamikaze pilots. I think these guys are kamikaze — they’ll take down the country if they have to.”
Trump’s harsh words came as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., sent him a letter on Wednesday demanding another meeting about reopening the federal government.
“We write to demand a bipartisan meeting of legislative leaders to end the GOP shutdown of the federal government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis. Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime and anyplace,” they wrote, before using one of Trump’s favorite lines on social media: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Trump urged the Republican senators to terminate the 60-vote threshold known as the legislative filibuster, arguing that the party could open the government and pass their preferred bills on their own without needing a handful of Democratic votes in the Senate.
“It’s time for Republicans to do what they have to do, and that’s terminate the filibuster. It’s the only way you can do it,” Trump said. “And if you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape. We won’t pass any legislation. There’ll be no legislation passed for three and a quarter [years]. We have three and a quarter years, so that’s a long time.”
Describing congressional Democrats as “radical subversives,” Trump told Republican senators he wants them to end the legislative filibuster “this afternoon.”
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., dismissed the chances that the Senate would kill the filibuster. Some Republicans have expressed concern that ending it would leave them powerless to stop a liberal agenda if Democrats regain control of the Senate.
“He’s obviously very influential, and our members want to be good partners and help him implement his agenda,” Thune said of Trump after returning to the Capitol. “So I don’t doubt that he could have some sway with members, but I just know … where the math is on this issue in the Senate.”
‘Beautiful machine’
The president pushed his fellow Republicans to execute the so-called nuclear option in order to create a “beautiful machine” that would be able to pass Republican-led bills in both chambers to be signed into law. If the 60-vote threshold for legislation remains in place in the Senate, Trump predicted the remainder of his term would be a legislative dead end.
“I think it’s very important, we have to get the country open. And the way we’re going to do it this afternoon is to terminate the filibuster. And it’s possible you’re not going to do that, and I’m going to go by your wishes. You’re very smart people. We’re good friends,” he said. “But I think it’s a tremendous mistake. Really. It would be a tragic mistake.
“Actually, it’s time, it’s time,” he said. He said Democrats would eliminate the filibuster when they next take power.
“Then it’s like we have to do it first, and we have two years, and we’ll end up with two, three years, and we’ll have this country so perfect. We will have passed more legislation than any Congress and any group of senators or group of congressmen, and we will get it through.”
Some GOP conservatives appear eager to follow Trump’s lead and abolish the filibuster.
“We know exactly what Democrats will do if they get power, they get control, they’re going to nuke it,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said. “So the question for us, do we let them do it first, or do we use it now when they’re being unbelievably obstructive, to do the things the American people support?’”
Democrats sweep
The breakfast — invitations for which were sent to senators on Tuesday afternoon — came after Democrats swept several off-year elections.
Self-identified Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani romped to a win in the three-way mayoral race in Trump’s native New York City. Democratic candidates easily won gubernatorial races in New Jersey, where Trump had closed his own margin of defeat last year, and in Virginia, where Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin won in 2021.
“Last night was not expected to be a victory,” Trump said at the breakfast, downplaying what analysts called a terrible night for him and Republicans. “I don’t think it was good for Republicans. I’m not sure it was good for anybody. But we had an interesting evening, and we learned a lot.”
Trump spoke for about 20 minutes, then asked the press pool to exit the State Dining Room. Before reporters and cameras were escorted out, Trump said he and the lawmakers would “have a discussion after the press leaves about what last night represented, and what we should do about it, and also about the shutdown, how that relates to last night.”
Trump has a mixed record of having coattails in off-year and midterm election races when he is not on the ballot. He offered a partial assessment of what went so wrong for the GOP on Tuesday: “The shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans.”
In addition to passing a measure to reopen the government, he called for a bill on voter identification requirements and nixing mail-in voting to be passed in a filibuster-free era.
“We should do our own bills. We should open up. We should start tonight,” he said. “Then we should pass voter ID. We should pass no mail-in voting. We should pass all the things that we want to pass [to] make our elections secure and safe.
“Because California is a disaster. Many of the states are disasters. But can you imagine when they vote almost unanimously against voter ID? All we want is voter ID,” Trump said. “You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you give ID. But for voting, they want no voter ID. It’s only for one reason, because they cheat. We would pass that in 15 minutes.”
‘Blue slips are a disaster’
Trump at the breakfast also made one of his most impassioned pleas for Republican leaders in the Senate to end the practice known as the “blue slip,” which allows a senator from the same state as a judicial nominee to block votes on that nominee’s confirmation.
“I have a case where I have great U.S. attorneys that can’t be approved because of the blue slips. The blue slips, I think you should terminate blue slips, too. It’s a mental termination because it’s really a custom,” he said. “But if you have a Democrat senator or two — two is bad — but it doesn’t make any difference if you have one senator [who] writes a negative letter on some great U.S. attorney [nominee].”
Trump used the case of former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton as an example. His nomination to be U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York was blocked by Schumer. A federal judge earlier this year approved Clayton to serve in an interim capacity, meaning he could stay in the office for the duration of Trump’s term.
Trump described Clayton’s education, as well as his government and private sector work as “flawless,” adding: “This is a very high-quality person, but he couldn’t get approval from Schumer.”
But after he panned the blue-slip practice for several minutes, Trump called filibuster termination his “biggest” demand of GOP senators.
Aris Folley and Jacob Fulton contributed to this report.
The post Trump urges GOP senators to change Senate rules to reopen government appeared first on Roll Call.
