The president wants the SAVE Act passed, and he’s making Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s life miserable over the fact that there aren’t enough votes. As Rich says on today’s edition of The Editors, it’s Trump “who doesn’t understand why this thing doesn’t have the votes to pass and wants to eliminate the filibuster to try to pass it.” Charlie calls the whole thing “theater.”
“I find myself completely unmoved by all of this. The Senate is a separate branch of government. The Senate has a filibuster in place. There are not the votes to abolish the filibuster, thankfully.” Charlie points out that “even if the filibuster disappeared tomorrow, the Save Act wouldn’t pass. . . . I see this as theater and I’m deaf to the cries of those who call me names for this opinion. I don’t care. This is math. John Thune does not work for Donald Trump. And even if he did, the other senators who have made their positions clear do not work for John Thune.”
“There is no way right now,” Charlie says, “that the Republicans are going to abolish the filibuster when there is no way that Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski and others are going to vote against the SAVE Act. So what this amounts to once again is a lament that Republicans don’t have as many seats in the Senate as they would like to have. And that’s fine. But lamenting is not a strategy.”
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