Trump rails against Democrats as Senate takes up his nominees
President Trump blasted Democrats again for delaying the process of getting his nominees confirmed by the upper chamber and praised Senate Republicans for staying in Washington and working on getting the president’s picks approved.
“Very proud of our great Republican Senators for fighting, over the Weekend and far beyond, if necessary, in order to get my great Appointments approved, and on their way to helping us MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote in a Saturday post on Truth Social.
The president then hammered Senate Democrats, arguing they are doing “everything possible to DELAY these wonderful and talented people from being” confirmed.
“If George Washington or Abraham Lincoln were up for approval, the Dems would delay, as long as possible, then vote them out. The Democrats want our Country to fail, because they have failed,” the president said, thanking Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and “our Republican Warriors in the Senate. Fight and WIN. I am with you all the way!!!”
Thune told reporters on Thursday that recess appointments, to help tackle the backlog of over 160 nominees, mostly for lower-level positions, are “on the table.”
“I think everything is on the table,” Thune said, adding that changes to rules would “make more sense.”
“Fixing the rules, not just for now, but for the long term, would be a better solution for it. But at this point right now, I wouldn’t say we’re taking any options off the table,” the South Dakota Republican said.
GOP senators have expressed openness to forging an agreement with Democrats to help confirm a tranche of Trump’s nominees, but they are open to pivoting to other options if the deal does not go through.
“If we can’t then we will have to resort to other options and we’ve got a lot of support for doing that,” Thune said in a Saturday interview with Politico. Republicans would need virtually all of their conference to vote for changing the rules.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has backed the party’s approach to the president’s nominees, saying Saturday that “historically bad nominees deserve historic levels of scrutiny.”
“We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as Trump’s,” Schumer said in a post on social media platform X. “And they know that.”
Thune and Schumer’s offices have been in contact this week and the New York senator had sent a counterproposal on Friday, according to Politico.