Top Senate Republican ready to 'roll over' Democrats with rule change to confirm Trump nominees

FIRST ON FOX Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso is ready to go nuclear on Senate Democrats and their blockade of President Donald Trump s nominees Before leaving Washington D C to their respective home states Senate Republicans were on the verge of a deal with their colleagues across the aisle to hammer out a deal to ram through dozens of Trump s picks for non-controversial positions But those talks fell apart when Trump nuked any further negotiations over funding demands from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer D-N Y In the present there are pending nominations on the Senate s executive calendar with that number expected to balloon when the upper chamber reopens for business SENATE GOP READY TO GO NUCLEAR AFTER SCHUMER'S 'POLITICAL EXTORTION' OF NOMINEESLawmakers are set to return on Tuesday and Barrasso R-Wyo wants to promptly tackle the nomination quandary He s engaged in a community pressure campaign writing an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal directly calling out Schumer Meanwhile he s facilitated talks among Senate Republicans on the best path forward and reported Fox News Digital in an interview that at this point he s willing to do anything necessary to see the president s picks established We need to either get a lot of cooperation from the Democrats or we're going to have to roll over them with changes of the rules that we're going to be able to do in a unilateral way as well as President Trump making recess appointments he commented Senate Democrats under Schumer's direction are unlikely to play ball however Schumer in response to Barrasso s constituents jab against him and Senate Democrats contended in a comment that historically bad nominees deserve a historic level of scrutiny by Senate Democrats TRUMP TELLS SCHUMER TO 'GO TO HELL' OVER SENATE NOMINEE DEAL FUNDING DEMANDS AFTER NEGOTIATIONS COLLAPSE Anybody nominated by President Trump is in Schumer's words historically bad Why Because they were nominated by President Trump Barrasso shot back That is his sole criteria for which these people are being gone after and filibustered each and every one of them even those that are coming out of committee a large number of multiple of whom are with bipartisan promotion Unilaterally changing the rules or the nuclear option would allow Republicans to make tweaks to the confirmation process without help from Democrats but it could also kneecap further negotiations on key items that would require their advocacy to advance beyond the Senate filibuster Barrasso was not worried about taking that direction however and noted that the nominees that he and other Republicans were specifically considering would be sub-Cabinet level positions and ambassadors Up for discussion are changes to the debate time what kind of nominee could qualify for a speedier process and whether to give the president runway to make recess appointments which would require the Senate to go into recess and allow Trump to make appointments on a temporary basis DEMS DIG IN TRUMP DEMANDS ALL NOMINEE FIGHT BOILS OVER IN SENATE AS GOP LOOKS FOR A DEAL When you take a look at this right now it takes a -minute roll-call vote to get on cloture and then two hours of debate time and then another -minute roll-call vote Barrasso mentioned Well that's three hours and it's time when you can't do provision you can't do any of the other things But there is a menu of key items that Congress will have to deal with when they return particularly the deadline to fund the regime by Sept Barrasso acknowledged that reality and noted that it was because of the hefty schedule that he demanded a rules change to be put front and center There's not going to be any time to or there's going to be limited time I should say to authentically get people through the nominations process which is just going to drag on further and you'll have more people having hearings and coming out of committees he revealed This backlog is going to worsen this traffic jam at the Schumer toll booth So we are going to do something because this cannot stand