Donald Trump defended posting Tom Cotton’s personal phone number on Saturday, saying he was trying to push the Arkansas senator to bend on daylight saving time. The move put a personal line of pressure on a fight that has already stalled the Sunshine Protection Act in the Senate.
Trump said he wanted to get away from the “ridiculous” custom of changing clocks twice a year, arguing that it is expensive and creates problems. The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act in July, but Cotton’s opposition has blocked it in the Senate, where he says permanent daylight saving time would leave Arkansas waking up in the dark.
Cotton has made that argument in blunt terms. Last year, he warned that sunrise would not come until after 8 a.m. in some parts of Arkansas if daylight saving time became permanent. He has said children, commuters, farmers and construction workers would start their days in darkness, and on Saturday he wrote on X that Arkansans do not want their kids going to school in the pitch dark.
That criticism is what makes Trump’s decision unusual. He was not just arguing for a policy change. He was using Cotton’s own phone number as leverage against a senator who has already shown he will not move. John Kennedy added another layer to the dispute on Sunday, saying in an interview with NBC News that Trump “can go from zero to a–hole in about three seconds” and that he did not think handing out Cotton’s cell number would help persuade him.
The clash leaves the bill where it was before Trump intervened: passed by the House, blocked in the Senate, and tied to a question Cotton has not budged on. Arkansans are still left with the same basic tradeoff he describes — fewer clock changes, or dark winter mornings that reach into the school day.
