Trump-Senate GOP Alliance Unravels Before Midterms
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- Trump upended his own confirmation timeline with an overnight Wednesday social-media post delaying Jay Clayton's nomination to be national intelligence director just hours before his hearing, and said he would not sign renewal of a key surveillance law without new terms.
- Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) called Trump's Iran deal "the worst foreign policy blunder in decades" on X, while Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) reacted to the Clayton delay by saying, "my God, somebody's not dialing the president into the complexities of what he's done here."
- Trump has pressured Senate Majority Leader John Thune relentlessly to scrap the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act, warning in a Thursday post he would be "the last Republican president" if the bill dies — despite Thune publicly and privately saying the votes aren't there.
- Trump's Senate alliance has visibly thinned: Cassidy and Sen. John Cornyn both lost primaries after Trump endorsed their opponents, and Tillis announced he wouldn't seek reelection after repeated Trump attacks on social media; Cornyn responded to his loss by posting a frog-and-scorpion fable about a creature that couldn't help stinging its host.
- At a private GOP conference lunch, several Republican senators criticized Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) for stoking intra-party dissension in an election year; Cornyn publicly replied that Lee's job is to "prove us wrong" by finding the votes, "if you can."
- First-term Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) stood apart from the criticism, aggressively defending Trump's Iran agreement on X with: "Let's get the Nobel Peace Prize ready!"
Why it matters: Republicans defending their majorities in November now inherit a fresh political liability: three sitting senators who crossed Trump are his loudest critics, and the president's single-minded push for an unwinnable voting bill has stalled broader Senate business — including his own nominees and surveillance law reauthorization — leaving the party without a unified midterm message to replace last year's tax-and-spending victory.
