Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin (R) joined Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” to discuss the latest developments regarding Senate efforts to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominees in the face of Democrat resistance.
As Bonchie reported previously, Senate Republicans have (seemingly) learned a lesson and decided to play hardball with the Democrats — and President Trump is having none of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) shenanigans.
READ MORE: Senate Republicans Finally Wake Up and Play Hardball With Democrats Over Trump Nominees
Update: Trump Tells Schumer to ‘Go to Hell,’ As Senate Nominee ‘Deal’ Blows Up
On Saturday, the Senate got 10 nominees confirmed, including Jeanine Pirro as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Andrew Puzder as Ambassador to the European Union, Brian Burch as Ambassador to the Holy See, and Jason Reding Quinones as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
But the supposed “deal” Schumer wanted to secure amounted to a “small tranche” of nominations in exchange for unfreezing funding and foregoing any additional rescissions packages. Trump, as noted, said “No deal” and encouraged the Republicans to walk away.
Mullin explained to Bartiromo why Trump’s move was the right one, and the next play is a rule change — which can be laid squarely at the feet of Schumer and the Democrats. He also offered a comparison as to where nominations stand now versus this time in 2017.
Markwayne Mullin to Maria Bartiromo: “I’m proud of President Trump. I spoke to him this morning. By the way, he’s watching your show.” pic.twitter.com/C4CEup88IL
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 3, 2025
MULLIN: And I’m proud of President Trump – I spoke to him this morning, which, by the way, he’s watching your show —and he said…’I had to walk away. I didn’t have a choice.’ And I said, ‘Oh, Sir, I’m proud that you did this because we put them on notice and said, ‘We’re not going to play games with you anymore. So now you’re forcing us to change Senate rules,’ which, honestly, in the long run, is the best thing.
So as soon as we get back — through this, through August, we’re gonna be working on rules change — when we get back, we’re gonna have to implement those rules change, and it’s not our fault. Democrats are gonna scream, saying we’re doing the nuclear option. No, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats did the…nuclear option because they have filibustered. We have 131 nominees confirmed. They have filibustered every single one of those, except Marco Rubio. And I want to compare the difference between where we [were] at in ’17 to where we’re at today, because I wanna show the leadership and effectiveness of Leader Thune. In 2017, we only had 55 confirmed at this same time — and they weren’t filibustering all of them. Because Thune made it very clear — we can do this the hard way or easy way — you remember him saying that in the beginning? They chose to do the hard way, so we have stayed, the Senate has stayed in more consecutive days than we have in 15 years. We’ve taken more votes than we have in 35 years, and we’ve confirmed 131 people.
Schumer continued to try to spin the situation by characterizing Trump’s nominees as “historically unqualified.” Mullin was having none of it:
Laughable. The truth: Chuck Schumer tried to EXTORT President Trump for $1 billion dollars in liberal pet projects… even to speed up over 50 BIPARTISAN nominee confirmations.
Trump told them to pound sand. https://t.co/OH1qb9zdFT
— Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) August 3, 2025
Laughable. The truth: Chuck Schumer tried to EXTORT President Trump for $1 billion dollars in liberal pet projects… even to speed up over 50 BIPARTISAN nominee confirmations.
Trump told them to pound sand.
Mullin also spoke to those on X who seem to be under the mistaken impression that Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is somehow attempting to thwart the nomination process by entering into the August recess without allowing for recess appointments, citing Trump’s Saturday Truth praising the Senate GOP for their efforts.
Nobody blocked Trump from recess appointments. We spent 3 days working with the President 24/7— all options were on the table, including recess appointments. The next play call: change the Senate rules as a permanent solution, overpower Dems, expedite the nominees. pic.twitter.com/ppqNelUPat
— Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) August 3, 2025
Nobody blocked Trump from recess appointments. We spent 3 days working with the President 24/7— all options were on the table, including recess appointments. The next play call: change the Senate rules as a permanent solution, overpower Dems, expedite the nominees.
It also bears noting that Trump hasn’t taken to Truth Social to excoriate Thune for somehow working against him if that were, in fact, the case. Instead, his most recent comment on the matter was this:
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 2, 2025
A great job being done by “Leader” John Thune, and “Speaker” Mike Johnson. Thank you both! The GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL WILL GO DOWN AS ONE OF THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL PIECES OF LEGISLATION IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. MAGA!!!
The takeaway here appears to be that Senate Republicans have made serious headway on Trump’s nominations, but since the Democrats are hellbent on being obstructionists, when they return, they’re going to get to lie in the bed they made for themselves.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is leading America into the “Golden Age” as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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