Let’s be perfectly clear, as others have pointed out, Donald Trump did not criticize the U.S. Cons ution over the weekend. He did not attack our cons utional system of checks and balances. He was speaking of the House and Senate rules in Congress that Democrats are abusing to obstruct his agenda. Specifically, Trump was talking about the filibuster rules in the U.S. Senate.
Read for yourself what Trump said (emphasis added):
[TRUMP:] I understand what has to be done, I get things done I've always been a closer. We don't have a lot of closers in politics and I understand why. It's a very rough system, it's an archaic system. You look at the rules of the Senate, even the rules of the House, but the rule of the Senate and some of the things you have to go through, it's really a bad thing for the country in my opinion.
There are archaic rules and maybe at some point, we're going to have to take those rules on because for the good of the nation things are going to have to be different. You can't go through a process like this. It's not fair, it forces you to make bad decisions. I mean, if you're forced into doing things that you would normally not do except for these archaic rules, so –
MACCALLUM: Like what, how would you change them?
TRUMP: Well, you know, you look at the voting and you look at the filibuster system. And it used to be. You know, I always thought of filibuster where you stand up and you talk all day and then somebody else—
MACCALLUM: You don't have to do that anymore.
TRUMP: No, you don't have to do it anymore. Today you say filibuster, guys sit home and they watch television or whatever they do. I think, you know, the filibuster concept is not a good concept to start off with but if you're going to filibuster, let somebody stand up for 20 hours and talk and do what they have to do or even if they are reading comic books to everybody, let them do it, but honestly, the whole, with so many bad concepts in our rules and it's forcing bad decisions. I really see. I see just -- I've seen this -- I've seen it over the years where bad decisions are made, decisions that nobody wanted are made because of archaic rules and that's something that I think we're going to have to change.
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