Escalating an already bitter rift with his own party’s leadership, the president abruptly pulled his intelligence nominee to protect them from the threat of lawmakers exercising their constitutional duties.
WASHINGTON — Escalating an already bitter rift with his own party’s leadership, President Donald Trump formally condemned Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday for the "deeply hostile and partisan act" of scheduling a routine confirmation hearing for a White House intelligence nominee.
The president abruptly pulled the nominee from the Senate Intelligence Committee docket just hours before proceedings were set to begin, describing the lawmakers' attempt to exercise their constitutional advice-and-consent role as an unacceptable provocation. According to a White House statement released Tuesday evening, any further efforts by Republican senators to ask questions, review financial disclosures, or sit in a room with a cabinet appointee will be treated as outright treason.
To resolve the standoff, the president has insisted that Thune immediately abolish the legislative filibuster, a move administration officials say is necessary to streamline the Republican majority’s total capitulation.
By eliminating the 60-vote threshold, we can ensure that Senate Republicans are able to surrender their remaining institutional authority with a simple, efficient majority.
Behind closed doors, Thune has reportedly struggled to manage a fractured caucus. Aides familiar with the majority leader’s thinking, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal panic, said Thune spent much of Wednesday morning attempting to draft a procedural framework that would allow the Senate to vote on nominees without technically acknowledging they exist.
In a memo circulated to Senate offices, the White House outlined its new, streamlined confirmation protocol. Under the proposed framework, the traditional committee review process would be replaced by a single, mandatory loyalty oath delivered by Thune on the Senate floor, after which the executive branch would assume direct control of the Capitol building's legislative calendar.
Several Republican senators expressed mild, heavily caveated frustration with the president's demands before immediately walking back their own statements in official press releases. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters she found the president's decision to dissolve the confirmation process "troubling," adding that she hoped the White House would at least allow the Senate to print the nominees' names on commemorative plaques before swearing them in.
At press time, the White House had reportedly dispatched a primary challenger to Thune's district after the majority leader was caught on a hot mic whispering the word "procedure."