Harry Reid changed the Senate rules the second he had the votes.
Now Trump is watching Senate Republicans protect the woman Reid installed to run the chamber — and he's done being polite about it.
If Republicans don't act, Trump just warned them, they won't have another president to protect.
The Parliamentarian Republicans Refused to Fire
Elizabeth MacDonough has been the Senate parliamentarian since 2012 — put there by Harry Reid at the height of his hardball reign over the Democratic caucus.
Reid didn't hire soft people.
He hired fighters.
MacDonough has spent years proving it.
She threw out Republican language stripping Medicaid and Medicare benefits from illegal immigrants during Big Beautiful Bill negotiations.
Over the weekend she killed $1 billion in Homeland Security funding tied to White House renovations.
https://twitter.com/JKash000/status/2057142251151667613?s=20
And she's the reason the SAVE America Act can't move through reconciliation — a ruling Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana challenged from the Senate floor back in March.
Trump didn't mince words on Truth Social Wednesday.
"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," Trump wrote.
He had a simple question: why hasn't she been replaced?
It's a fair one.
The Senate secretary — who serves at the pleasure of the majority leader — does the hiring. Republicans have run the Senate.
MacDonough is still in that chair.
What the SAVE America Act Would Actually Do
The bill Trump wants passed is straightforward.
Proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.
Photo ID at the ballot box. Limits on mail-in voting — with carve-outs for the disabled, military, and people traveling out of state.
Democrats have blocked it at every turn because they know what it does: it closes the door on the voting schemes that cost Republicans elections.
MacDonough has been the mechanism for that blockade.
https://twitter.com/SaveAmericaNew/status/2057283874128875831?s=20
Reconciliation only requires 51 votes instead of 60 — and she's been ruling key provisions out of it.
Trump's message Wednesday was simple: pick the lock or lose everything.
"Kill the Filibuster, which would give us everything," Trump wrote. "If we don't pass at least one of these two provisions quickly, you will never see another Republican President again."
Democrats Already Told You What They'll Do
Republicans who defend the filibuster love to argue that Democrats would never actually kill it.
They'd be destroying a protection they'll need someday.
That argument died in 2013.
Harry Reid – the same man who installed MacDonough – eliminated the filibuster for executive and judicial nominees when Republicans used it to block Obama's picks.
He called it the "nuclear option" and pulled the trigger without blinking.
Democrats came within two Senate votes of doing it again in 2021.
Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were the only thing standing between Chuck Schumer and a filibuster-free Senate. Manchin is gone. Sinema is gone.
The next time Democrats have 50 votes, there's nothing stopping them.
Trump spelled out exactly what comes after that.
Two new states – D.C. and Puerto Rico – meaning four new Democrat senators, a wall of Electoral College votes, and what Trump described as Democrats' dream of a 21-justice Supreme Court.
With a filibuster-free Senate and a Democratic president, the whole package becomes possible.
Here's what kills me about this debate.
https://twitter.com/ConstitustionX/status/2056349164116873481?s=20
Senate Republicans are sitting on their hands to protect a rule Democrats will nuke the second they're back in power.
They saw what Reid did in 2013.
They watched Schumer nearly finish the job in 2021.
The guardrails are gone now — Manchin and Sinema aren't walking back through that door.
Reid didn't protect the filibuster when he had 51 votes. He killed it for judges.
Then Democrats tried to kill it for everything.
You already know what happens when they get another shot.
So Republicans have a choice.
Act now, pass the SAVE America Act, stop the statehood schemes, and use the majority voters handed them.
Or keep treating Senate procedure like it's sacred – right up until the moment Democrats shred it and use it to bury them.
Trump's not wrong. He's not even being impatient.
He's the only one in the room doing the math.
Sources:
- Randy DeSoto, "Trump Tears Into Senate GOP for Playing 'Soft' While Dems Champ at the Bit to Seize Permanent Power," The Western Journal, May 20, 2026.
- Alexander Bolton, "Reid triggers 'nuclear option,'" The Hill, November 21, 2013.
- Mitch McConnell, Senate floor remarks on filibuster reform attempts, Congressional Record, January 2022.
- Ballotpedia, "Senate Parliamentarian," Ballotpedia.org, accessed May 2026.