Donald Trump warned against eliminating the Senate filibuster on Monday. He said the move could end up being “catastrophic” for the Republican Party. But, Trump called for it to end while he was president.
Trump said on “The Truth with Lisa Boothe,” podcast that McConnell is “hanging on by a thread.”
“And if they get the filler, he’s hanging on Joe Manchin, who always goes with the Democrats. Joe talks, but he ends up going with the Democrats,” Trump said, according to the Hill. “Now there’s another great senator from the state of Arizona. He’s hanging by a thread and if they get rid of the filibuster, if they knock it out, it will be catastrophic for the Republican Party.”
In a series of Tweets in 2017, Trump called for an end to the filibuster two days after the party’s Obamacare repeal bill failed to attract a majority of senators. He said at the time that Republicans “look like fools and are wasting time” by preserving the filibuster.
“The very outdated filibuster rule must go. Budget reconciliation is killing R’s in Senate. Mitch M, go to 51 Votes NOW and WIN. IT’S TIME!,” Trump tweeted. “Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don’t go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time…….8 Dems totally control the U.S. Senate. Many great Republican bills will never pass, like Kate’s Law and complete Healthcare. Get smart!”
Democrats have called for eliminating the rule used by southern segregationists in the mid-20th century to block equal rights for black people.
Last week President Joe Biden, who served in the Senate for more than three decades came out in support of filibuster reform.
“I don’t think that you have to eliminate the filibuster, you have to do it what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days,” Biden told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “You had to stand up and command the floor; you had to keep talking.”
But Republicans are vowing to throw up roadblocks.
“Let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues: Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin, can even begin, to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said “I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, every one of them, requires a physical quorum.”
