Republicans might not be stuck with Donald Trump forever, at least if one former party insider is to be believed. According to a new account, a former GOP senator has quietly circled the moment when Republicans will finally feel safe enough to turn on the president, and it has nothing to do with conscience, only calendars.
Politico’s politics bureau chief Jonathan Martin recounted the conversation on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, explaining that the unnamed ex senator boiled it down to two simple words. “Quite frankly, I talked to a former GOP senator,” Martin said via Daily Beast, adding: “[They] said two words to me: filing deadlines.”
Martin then unpacked what that meant. “Why do filing deadlines matter?” he continued. “Because what the senator was talking about was the filing deadlines for primaries next year. Which is to say, when that clears, when that passes, when these lawmakers know who is or is not running against them in primaries next year, then you’ll see even more freedom, even more independence.”
In other words, Republicans will not move until they are sure Trump cannot easily recruit a MAGA challenger to end their careers. Once the window for primary candidates closes in 2026, this theory goes, members of Congress who have been biting their tongues might finally say what they really think.
The timing matters because Trump is dragging a long list of political headaches behind him. His approval rating has sunk to 38 percent in at least one national poll, the lowest since his return to office, as voters sour on his handling of sky high prices and the scandal surrounding the Epstein files. Inside the party, lawmakers are still trying to process a string of controversies, from allegations of war crimes against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Trump’s decision to pardon a former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking.
BREAKING: Fox News SHATTERS Trump’s approval myth, admits to viewers that his approval rating has plummeted to a low of 38%, “they’ve given him 9 months… and things really haven’t improved.”
Make sure everyone sees this.pic.twitter.com/O8YDyH3Bcy
— Really American 🇺🇸 (@ReallyAmerican1) November 19, 2025
“I think it is one more rock on the back of the members of Congress that they are carrying up the hill,” Martin said, referring to looming congressional hearings into whether Hegseth’s actions may amount to crimes against humanity under international law. “The hill is Mount Trump,” he went on. “And the hill is having to burden this daily humiliation.”
Martin’s point is not that Republicans suddenly discovered a red line, but that they are waiting for self interest to line up with self preservation. Once they know they are safe from Trump backed primary challengers, he suggested, their public tone could shift fast.
“These guys care about their seats and about their reelections,” Martin said. “If they see that they do not have a primary challenger by a date certain next year, 2026, they can start saying what they actually think about what [right wing pundit] George Will calls the ‘moral slum’ of this administration.”
Will’s phrase, “a sickening moral slum of an administration,” first appeared in a Washington Post column and has since been cited repeatedly by critics of Trump’s second term, especially after a Navy “double tap” boat strike and the Signal messaging scandal involving Hegseth.
For now, most Republicans in Congress are still publicly in line behind Trump, even as private frustration grows. Martin’s account suggests that many of them are looking not to a single shocking event, but to a date on the calendar, the moment primary filing deadlines pass and the threat of a Trump inspired challenger fades.
If that former senator is right, the party’s real break with Trump will not come in a dramatic late night announcement or a floor vote, but in a quieter season, when lawmakers finally decide they can afford to say out loud what they have been grumbling in private about the “moral slum” they have been defending.
