President Donald Trump has plans to use sleep deprivation as a way to throw his weight around with GOP senators.
As the government shutdown quickly approaches its 35th day, the president is growing increasingly agitated that Democrats have not caved to Republican demands. Now, he’s ready to use extreme tactics to get GOP senators to comply with his desire to deploy “the nuclear option” to eliminate the Senate filibuster rule.
An unnamed MAGA adviser is promising that Trump will make the lives of senators who don’t comply with his demand to destroy the long-standing check on power “a living hell,” according to a new report from 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 advisor told the publication.
This would not be the first time Trump has used middle-of-the-night interruptions to exert his will. Stephen Miller’s wife, Katie, recently revealed that her husband can’t get any sleep because the president will wake him up in the middle of the night while traveling on Air Force One.
Now, Trump will use his infamous insomnia against uncooperative senators.
“He’s really mad about this,” the advisor told Axios.
That fury is evident in Trump’s social media posts from Tuesday.
“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!),” Trump wrote in a sprawling Truth Social post.
He continued by saying that if the Republicans didn’t nuke the filibuster, the Democrats would do so. “Remember, Republicans, they are going to end the Filibuster as soon as they get the chance. We know this because they already tried, and the only two people who didn’t go along are now out of office,” his screed continued.
He concluded the 276-word post by saying: “But they have much less chance of WINNING if we have Great Policy Wins after Wins after Wins. IN FACT, THEY WILL LOSE BIG, AND FOR A VERY LONG TIME. TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER NOW, END THE RIDICULOUS SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATELY, AND THEN, MOST IMPORTANTLY, PASS EVERY WONDERFUL REPUBLICAN POLICY THAT WE HAVE DREAMT OF, FOR YEARS, BUT NEVER GOTTEN. WE WILL BE THE PARTY THAT CANNOT BE BEATEN—THE SMART PARTY!!!”
In a more succinct follow up, Trump simply wrote: “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER!!!”
The president’s demands have not been well-received by either side. The Rupert Murdoch-owned The Wall Street Journal warned Republicans that following the MAGA leader’s wishes on the matter would be “dumb.”
“You knew it would happen. Frustrated by Congress, President Trump is demanding that Republican Senators break the 60-vote filibuster rule to pass legislation,” the editors at the Journal wrote. “Republicans would be dumb and hurt the country by breaking the filibuster.”
Trump’s urgency to end the shutdown, which began on Sept. 30, comes after new polling shows that the majority of Americans blame Republicans and the Trump administration for the extended disruption. The two longest government shutdowns in U.S. history have been under Trump’s watch.
But even Trump’s goons have been hesitant to publicly align themselves with his desire to remove the filibuster. Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday echoed the sentiments of the Journal’s editorial.
“What would the Democrats do if they had no filibuster impediment, no speed bump at all?” Johnson said at a press conference. It was his feeble attempt at countering Trump’s relentless and repeated demands to end the filibuster, which included four separate requests in five days.
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