Popular vote loser Donald Trump isn't particularly good at processing complexity. He hasn't had to be—look where graft, corruption, and cozying up to Russian oligarchs has gotten him. But presidenting is different, and that’s a lesson he still hasn't absorbed.
Take, for example, his fixation on Senate Democrats and the filibuster being the reason he can't have his wall. Never mind that it's actually because Speaker Paul Ryan can't cobble together 218 votes in the Republican conference, in large part because he can't make Trump stay on message. It's all about Senate Democrats, according to Trump. He harps on about that incessantly in public statements and in private, too.
A "big chunk of the lengthy meeting" between Trump and House and Senate appropriators, ostensibly about the budget, was devoted to Trump railing about the filibuster. Apparently this comes from watching something other than Fox & Friends on the tv, because he kept going on about Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the 1939 movie, and saying it is the "example of how the process should operate." If he sees it on a screen, it's real.
He told some 15 House and Senate leaders and appropriators that Senate Republicans had to get rid of the filibuster now, and that if they didn't it could mean "the end of the party," because they weren't getting anything done. And here's the best part of what he told them: he has a friend who is also friends with Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Chuck Schumer told their friend that if Democrats get back in the majority, he's totally going to get rid of the filibuster.
We should be so lucky. Schumer likely has no such intentions as an aide to "a senior GOP senator" told Politico. "Schumer has privately reassured Republican senators in recent weeks," the aide said, "that he would not change the rules and is committed to keeping the filibuster." That sounds more like Schumer.
At any rate, McConnell isn't going to do it, he reiterated again Wednesday. "I simply disagree with the president about the harm that it does," he said in a Politico Playbook interview. "As I've told him repeatedly, the votes just aren't there to change it." Maybe he should try saying it on Fox & Friends. Then it might actually sink in.