Senate Republicans Are Dug In Against Nuking Filibuster Despite Trump

Senate Republicans are resisting President Donald Trump’s escalating calls to eliminate the filibuster to end the government shutdown.

“We don’t have the votes to do it anyway,” Sen. Steve Daines told reporters on Tuesday. “It’s a moot point.”

Dozens of Senate Republicans — including top leaders — are on the record opposing the procedural maneuver to eliminate the filibuster, marking a rare fracture between the president and the Senate. Removing the filibuster requires a simple majority in the Senate.

That reality isn’t stopping the president from demanding the so-called nuclear option.

“The Democrats are far more likely to win the Midterms, and the next Presidential Election, if we don’t do the Termination of the Filibuster (The Nuclear Option!), because it will be impossible for Republicans to get Common Sense Policies done with these Crazed Democrat Lunatics being able to block everything by withholding their votes,” Trump wrote in a Tuesday Truth Social post, one of two seemingly directed at the Senate making this same ask.

“FOR THREE YEARS, NOTHING WILL BE PASSED, AND REPUBLICANS WILL BE BLAMED. Elections, including the Midterms, will be rightfully brutal,” he continued. “If we do terminate the Filibuster, we will get EVERYTHING approved, like no Congress in History.”

At the White House briefing Tuesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump “feels very strongly about” his desire for the Senate to get rid of the filibuster and has expressed that to congressional Republicans privately as well.

Majority Leader John Thune, a staunch supporter of protecting the Senate procedure, was resolute Tuesday morning that he didn’t have the votes.

“Everybody knows the president’s position,” Thune told reporters. “It’s well formed, established, from his first term in office, his request to end the filibuster rule.”

Republican Sen. John Kennedy told reporters Monday evening that he had recently spoken with Trump about retaining the filibuster and the blue slip procedure — a tradition that gives home state senators influence over judicial nominees.

“I will vote to sustain the filibuster and to sustain the blue slip,” Kennedy said, “but there’s not going to even be a vote.”

Sen. Mike Rounds told reporters Monday that Republican leadership has not given any guidance to the conference on issuing a vote on the filibuster. Rounds, too, is opposed to nuking the filibuster. Though, he said he understands Trump’s frustration with the stalemate on Capitol Hill, especially as the shutdown becomes the longest of all time.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday, “I understand desperate times call for desperate measures. I also understand that traditionally, we’ve seen that as an important safeguard.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are gleefully embracing the fissure between Trump and Senate Republicans.

“He’s going to continue to make his position clear until they eventually cave, which is what they always do, because Republicans in this Congress have been nothing more than a reckless rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Tuesday.

“If history is any indication,” he continued, “ultimately, compliant Republicans in the Senate are going to cave to the demands of their puppet master, Donald J. Trump.”