Donald Trump just spelled out his dreams of making America great again, and again, and again.
The president issued the ominous warning at a breakfast meeting with Republican senators at the White House. He told the reluctant GOP lawmakers that if they nuked the filibuster and took full power in D.C., they should be able to keep the Democrats out of power forever.
“If we do what I’m saying, they’ll never—they’ll most likely never—attain power,” he said.
“Because we will have passed every single thing that you can imagine,” he added.
The filibuster is a Senate rule that allows a minority to block most legislation by extending debate indefinitely, representing a key and perhaps, for now, one of the only weapons in the Senate Democrats’ arsenal for opposing the Republican agenda.
Ending the filibuster rule would allow the biggest party to pass almost any law with a simple majority of 51 votes. With 53 senators, that would give the GOP unprecedented power.
Trump suggested Wednesday that such a move would cement Republican dominance and make it almost impossible for Democrats to regain power. It is unclear if he was threatening to legislate to reshape democratic structures in his favor permanently.
“All these things are good,” the president mused. “We have to be able to get the word out. We don’t get the word out, we’re making a very big mistake.”
The MAGA leader’s desire for change comes as he repeatedly refuses to rule out running for a third White House term in violation of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.
“I would love to do it,” the already two-term serving president told reporters last month, despite the text of the Constitution clearly stating, “No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice.”
Trump’s White House breakfast summit with Republican senators comes the morning after a devastating slate of defeats for the GOP in gubernatorial, legislative, and local races across the country, billed ahead of time as the MAGA administration’s first major electoral test of the second Trump administration.
Zohran Mamdani, a young, Muslim Democrat, will now serve as the next mayor of New York City. Mike Sherill and Abigail Spanberger, both also Democrats, similarly secured victory in gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.
Commentators have described these results as a bellwether for things to come. “When Democrats sweep New York City, New Jersey, and Virginia governor, they won the U.S. House the next year, five out of five times in the last 90 years,” CNN Chief Data Analyst Harry Enten said ahead the votes this week.
Democrats are currently leading by eight points, the largest margin enjoyed by either party since 2018, in polls on voter intent ahead of midterms.
A CNN/SSRS survey published this week put Trump’s disapproval rating at 63 percent—the highest of either of his terms, eclipsing his previous high of 62 percent in the aftermath of the Capitol riot in January 2021.
Other surveys have similarly shown his administration’s attempts to blame Democrats for the ongoing federal shutdown, which over the weekend saw 42 million Americans lose access to full food aid benefits, are broadly failing, with more than half of voters holding the GOP accountable for the deadlock.
Trump ended his Wednesday address to Republican senators with a promise. “We will pass more legislation than any Congress and any group of senators or a group of congressmen,” he said. “It’ll be a beautiful machine.”
