President Donald Trump is making life almost impossible for Senate Republicans — and these days fewer of them are willing to just let it slide.
Some lawmakers that were once happy to brush off impulsive and disruptive behavior by saying they hadn’t seen the president’s social media posts or that it was just “Trump being Trump” are increasingly willing to speak out against what they view as bad decisions that undermine their ability to deliver legislative wins as the midterms approach.
The latest irritation was the early-morning Truth Social post Wednesday that upended GOP hopes of quickly confirming a new director of national intelligence and reviving a surveillance bill that Trump already derailed earlier this month.
The chaos that followed Trump’s sudden U-turn on Jay Clayton’s nomination, just hours before a scheduled confirmation hearing, further loosened tongues in the Capitol hallways — even from lawmakers who tend to be reliable allies.
“The president’s timing and communication needs improvement,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said. “I think it’s unfortunate. It throws a kicker into the system when we get going and then we have to readjust.”
Asked about frustration within the conference about the recent lack of coordination, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) added, “Well, duh.”
Kennedy added, “No, I don’t,” when asked if Trump takes senators into consideration: “He wants what he wants, and until he gets it, he just keeps pushing.”
The public frustrations are bubbling up at a crucial moment for Trump and Republicans more broadly. The president sent his wee-hours missive from France, where he was meeting with global leaders at the annual G7 conference and seeking to sell an Iran peace deal that many in his party despise.
Trump has faced recent pushback on several fronts in the Senate, with Republicans foiling plans to fund part of his White House ballroom project in a recent immigration funding deal and forcing the Justice Department to abandon plans for a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that could compensate Trump allies.
The president’s frequent demands that the Senate abandon its longstanding filibuster rule to pass more legislation along party lines, including a controversial elections overhaul, have also gone unheeded — adding to Trump’s obvious frustration.
He has now responded on several occasions by simply infuriating GOP senators who believe they are on the precipice of delivering a legislative win — only for Trump to suddenly pull the rug out from under them.
His announcement of the DOJ payout fund, for instance, delayed and nearly killed a critical immigration funding bill. And his decision to tap Bill Pulte, a close political ally who heads a housing agency, as acting director of national intelligence blew up a brewing three-year deal on reauthorizing a key piece of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who announced his retirement last year after breaking with Trump on policy legislation, said the dynamic is “undermining our ability to produce the very results he wants.”
“Look, we are not the manufacturing department of the Article II branch — we are the board of directors for the Article II branch,” he said. “You start treating us like that, coordinating with us like that, we won’t have these embarrassing setbacks.”
Trump’s decision to call off Clayton’s appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee came as Republicans believed he was on track to be confirmed as soon as Thursday. That, they believed, would allow for an extension of the spy law — something administration officials had previously argued is crucial to protect Americans amid the World Cup and ongoing America 250 celebrations.
Instead, Clayton and the FISA reauthorization have become the latest tension point between Trump and the Senate, with the president again hammering Republicans for not passing the partisan elections bill known as the SAVE America Act, while also needling them about refusing to blow up the filibuster and the internal rules granting home-state senators deference on some presidential nominees.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has expressed his own frustrations in a more understated way than others in the GOP ranks.
Normally chatty with reporters, Thune was unusually tight-lipped Wednesday, saying that Senate Republicans would have to figure out the path forward on Clayton and the surveillance law “one day at a time” and that his relationship with Trump was “fine” amid the public turmoil.
“The president has his own mind, makes his own decisions, so do we,” Thune said.
He later explained in an interview that the White House and Senate Republicans do a “fair amount of coordination.”
“But sometimes you get surprised,” he added. “It’s a business model the White House employs, and we’ve had to figure out how to be adaptable.”
The White House said in a statement that Trump has worked closely with Senate Republicans on the party’s agenda over the past year, including last year’s $4.5 trillion tax cut and the immigration enforcement bill passed earlier this year.
“We look forward to continuing these close relationships and fulfilling President Trump’s priorities that Americans elected him to enact,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in the statement.
Thune and Trump developed a good working relationship at the outset of the president’s second term, a turnaround from tensions that emerged in the period after Trump’s 2020 election loss that included him calling for a primary challenge to Thune in 2022. Several Senate Republicans praised Thune Wednesday for trying to keep the conference focused and said they didn’t believe Trump’s salvos were personal.
“Hating Thune would be like hating golden retrievers. You can’t dislike Thune. I don’t think the president dislikes him,” Kennedy said, while adding that Trump is fixated on the elections bill: “I just think he wants what he wants, and he continues to push. I just don’t think in this instance he’s likely to get it.”
Several other members identified the SAVE America Act as a persistent friction point despite GOP senators showing over and over again that the bill doesn’t have the votes to pass in the Senate. They are eager for Trump, and some of their own colleagues, to turn their focus from infighting to hammering Democrats heading into November.
Senate Republicans, according to two people granted anonymity to describe a private meeting, directly criticized Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) during a closed-door lunch Wednesday over setting unrealistic expectations about passing the bill.
Without naming Lee, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took a jab afterward at those “making unrealistic promises and then when they’re not obtained, criticizing one another.”
Cornyn, who lost his bid for renomination to a fifth term this month after Trump endorsed his opponent, also acknowledged the president was the source of “some frustration” inside the Senate GOP around “basically being able to function.”
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