Trump demands Senate Republicans fire parliamentarian
President Donald Trump on Wednesday demanded Senate Republicans fire the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, after she dominated this weekend that Republicans couldn’t embody funding for the White House ballroom in an immigration enforcement invoice.
Trump accused MacDonough of thwarting his agenda and urging Republicans to “get smart and tough,” escalating his long-running assaults on procedural hurdles inside Congress.
“Shockingly, Republicans have kept the very important position of ‘Parliamentarian’ in the hands of a woman, Elizabeth MacDonough, who was appointed, long ago, by Barack Hussein Obama and a vicious Lunatic known as Senator Harry Reid, who ran the Senate for the Dumocrats with an ‘iron fist,’” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Over the years, she has been brutal to Republicans, but not so to the Dumocrats — So why has she not been replaced?”
Obama didn’t have a say in MacDonough’s appointment in 2012.
Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota noticed that it is not the primary time Trump has made such a requirement, including that whereas “there may be some issues related to the parliamentarian, but most of the issues we have here are votes.”
“That’s, I guess, his opinion. But that would create even more vote issues here if we were to try and do something like that. So we’ll make sure that everybody has got security around here,” Thune mentioned, referring to considerations that MacDonough might be focused after Trump’s broadside.
The broadside got here simply days after MacDonough dominated {that a} provision permitting roughly $1 billion in White House and Secret Service safety funding tied to Trump’s ballroom undertaking couldn’t be included in Republicans’ reconciliation bundle underneath Senate guidelines.
The determination was a big setback for Republicans, who had hoped to move the funding with a easy majority vote as a part of a broader immigration and border safety bundle. MacDonough decided that the supply requires 60 votes within the Senate, all however dooming the thought.
On Monday, Semafor reported that Trump referred to as Thune, urging him to fire MacDonough.
Trump and his allies have argued the ballroom itself can be funded by means of non-public donations, whereas administration officers sought federal funding for associated safety upgrades, together with hardened infrastructure, drone detection techniques and Secret Service amenities.
On Tuesday, Trump defended the project amid mounting criticism from Democrats and skepticism from some Republicans over utilizing taxpayer {dollars} for a undertaking the president initially framed as privately financed.
During a tour of the development web site, Trump insisted the hassle was “a gift to the United States of America” and mentioned donors — not taxpayers — have been paying for the ballroom itself.