Donald Trump with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) and Melania Trump on January 8, 2025 (Office of Senator John Thune/Wikimedia Commons)
Alt hed: Trump ally swears Senate GOP will start 'behaving like the Senate' after Trump's latest tantrum
Axios co-founders Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei have named the GOP's refusal to stand up to President Donald Trump a "crisis."
Writing on Friday, the two asserted that years of blind "obedience" to the MAGA founder has brought the Republican Party to the crisis they find themselves in for 2026. In a way, they've "trained" Trump to believe that his tantrums, threats and erratic demands are not only acceptable but that he will be given what he wants simply to placate him.
"Trump has spent his second term steamrolling his own party, confident the lawmakers he humiliates will keep voting his way," they wrote.
The latest example is Trump's anger over the GOP refusing to eliminate the filibuster to pass Trump's voter restrictions bill. After being told "no," Trump staged a political tantrum and refused to sign the landmark housing affordability bill that both parties came together to craft ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Meanwhile, his own White House was touting the legislation as "one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history.” Even they appeared caught off guard by Trump's mid-morning Truth Social post, deciding to upend one of the few legislative accomplishments Republicans could put their names on to prove they passed legislation to help the affordability crisis.
Then,Trump's Capitol Hill meeting resulted in a fiery Trump attacking GOP "losers" who cast ballots in support of curbing Trump's authority over the Iran war. While the four senators were happy to stand on principle to limit the president, they caved and changed their vote after Trump yelled at them during a GOP lunch.
All the while, Republican lawmakers refuse to stand up collectively to quiet Trump's tantrums. Now it's coming to the detriment of their party in 2026.
An excerpt from the new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan details Trump's glee at Republicans losing elections without his name at the top of the ballot.
"The next month, when Republicans performed badly in the off-year elections, Trump would say he was 'honored' that people were saying that they couldn't win without him on the ballot," says the new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.
Now the GOP has returned to a place where they must explain to the American people why they should still keep their jobs while spending the last two years refusing to curb Trump's worst impulses.
The Axios reporters cited one long-time Trump ally saying, "The Senate is now behaving like the Senate. More to come. If he loses the Senate, his presidency will be effectively over. Yet he's acting like it doesn't matter."
It's unclear if that was said before or after the four Republican senators caved into Trump, calling them "losers" and changing their votes less than 48 hours ago.