President Donald Trump accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., of demanding over $1 billion in order to approve some of his judicial nominations in a post on his social media platform Saturday evening.
After long negotiations seeking to make a deal on Trump’s judicial nominees Saturday night, little progress was made, and now the Senate is in recess until September after Trump called it quits.
Telling Schumer to “GO TO HELL,” Trump told Republicans in his Truth Social post to “not accept the offer, go home, and explain to [their] constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country,” ending the post and the session with the directions to “Have a great RECESS and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Lawmakers had quickly voted on only seven of the judicial nominees, leaving around 60 left who had already earned bipartisan support in committees.
“The asks evolved on both sides quite a bit over time,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune R-S.D. “But in the end, we never got to a place where we had both sides agree to lock it in.”
In order to vote for many of Trump’s nominees, the Democrats requested the administration unfreeze billions of dollars in funding for foreign aid and the National Institute of Health as well agree to not clawback packages anymore.
“Senator Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is demanding over One Billion Dollars in order to approve a small number of our highly qualified nominees, who should right now be helping to run our Country,” Trump wrote in his post. “This demand is egregious and unprecedented, and would be embarrassing to the Republican Party if it were accepted. It is political extortion, by any other name.
Schumer hit back at Trump, saying “Senate Democrats wouldn’t let” Trump “steamroll” his “historically unqualified nominees” through the Senate.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., backed the president up, posting a video on X telling Americans to “stay tuned” because Republicans are “going to regroup, and prepare to CHANGE the Senate rules.”
