To Jamelle’s point, he is really obsessed with it. Jamelle is so right on with that. But even more than that, what he is hoping to do is cause such chaos in the Senate that the leadership there has no choice but do all of these broader-based things that he wants. Kill the filibuster or, you know, fire the parliamentarian, so they can ram through more things along party-line votes. He is just blowing the place up, and I do think that because of his lame-duck status and his toilet-level popularity numbers, we are finally seeing a few of the Republicans go, “Um, no. No, no, no, no, no. Had enough.” But maybe I’m just an optimist.
Bouie: I think you’re right, Michelle. Also, politically for them, it’s just like a bit too late, right? They already spent all of 2025 tying themselves incredibly tightly to the administration under, as I read it, irrational exuberance — this idea that kind of caught hold, I think, throughout a large part of American politics that Trump’s win represented some sort of MAGA sea change in American life.
And I believe I wrote multiple times, like in December 2024, that this wasn’t the case, and that what you would see pretty quickly was kind of a reversion to the mean. The mean being that people actually don’t like this guy very much when he’s president. And now we’re at this point where, yeah, Trump’s approval ratings are the political equivalent of green algae in the Reflecting Pool. And Republicans, I think, are beginning to distance themselves from him, but I think it’s a bit too late because there was no separation prior.
And so, I think for voters it’s like, well, of course you want to get away from him now, look how unpopular he is. The double-edged sword of Trump, for Republicans, has always been that, yes, in presidential elections, he can turn out a bunch of low-propensity voters, a bunch of nonvoters who then vote for Trump. They don’t vote down the ballot. They don’t show up in midterms, right? It’s like a sugar rush, and it’s not sustainable.
And Trump does not identify himself with the Republican Party. He identifies himself with his own political standing. And so, if he feels he needs to do something to protect his standing that harms Republicans, he’ll do it without even thinking. And Senate Republicans in particular, who did not expect to be fighting for their majority this fall, are somehow only now coming to understand that, yes, if you are in his way, he is going to make life difficult for you, even if that costs you a Senate majority. And there’s a 50/50 chance, 60/40 chance that, yeah, it costs the Republicans their Senate majority.
