Evan Vucci/AP
President Trump reiterated his call for Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster to end the shutdown on Friday, telling reporters during a bilateral meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that “the way to do it for Republicans is to end the filibuster.”
Senate GOP leaders have rejected the president’s request, saying the votes are not there to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most legislation.
“This is very bad, they are making a big mistake,” Trump said of GOP opposition to repealing the rule. “No, but they’re coming my way.”
“Only a fool would oppose that,” the president said, adding that “it makes no sense that a Republican wouldn’t want to do that.”
“Democrats will do it,” he said. “So if Democrats are going to do it, I say Republicans have to do it before they have a chance. It’s very simple. And if we did it, we would never lose the midterms, we would never lose the general election, because we would have produced so many different things for our people, for the people, for the country, that it would be impossible to lose the election.”
In response to a question about how long the closure will last, Trump said: “I don’t know.”
“It’s up to the Democrats,” he added. “Republicans have voted 14 times to open the country, and Democrats have voted 14 times to hurt the country, really. They should agree to it, but they may not agree to it. That’s why I like the fact that we ended the filibuster. If we ended the filibuster, the country would be open within 10 minutes after that termination.”
Regarding the possibility of reaching an agreement with the Democrats, Trump said: “I don’t know, we will see what they have.”