Latest / Best of: Features / Trump urges calls to Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton in push for permanent daylight saving time

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Trump urges calls to Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton in push for permanent daylight saving time · Best of: Features

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  Trump posts cell phone number of Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton in fight
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  over daylight saving time Written by Melissa Golden and Seung Min Kim.
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  This article is being read by an automated voice generated by Everlett.
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  President Donald Trump on Saturday pressured Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas
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  to support a bill to make daylight saving time permanent, posting the
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  personal cell phone number of the Chairman of Senate Intelligence Committee and
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  urging Americans to call it. The Sunshine Protection Act passed the House
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  in July, but it faces roadblocks in the Senate, where some Republicans
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  are strongly opposed. Proponents, including the White House, argue that the change
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  would provide more daylight during the times that Americans are most active.
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  Detractors said permanent daylight saving time would lead to darker, and potentially
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  more hazardous winter mornings when children will be waiting for school buses
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  and parents will be driving to work in darkness. It was a
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  remarkable escalation on Trump's part of a long standing fixation shared by
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  both men, with Trump supporting making daylight saving time permanent and cotton
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  vociferously opposed, at a time just weeks before the midterms, when Republicans
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  would prefer that the President focus on talking about affordability issues and
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  the party's achievements. Cotton is also up for re election this November,
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  although that race is not expected to be competitive. Trump calls daylight
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  saving time depressing. Daylight saving time is that period between spring and
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  fall when clocks in most parts of the United States are set
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  one hour ahead of standard time. Not all states observe It and
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  under the bill, states can opt out of the change if their
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  respective legislatures act to do so before the bill's enactment. It's a
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  lot of work for a lot of people, running around for two
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  days, changing all the clocks in the house, Trump told reporters as
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  his left the White House on Saturday for a rally in Vandalia,
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  Ohio. It discombobulates everybody, he said. Trump said The time change gives
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  golfers less time on the greens and tennis players less time on
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  the courts. He blamed Cotton for stopping the bill, so everyone in
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  Arkansas, a state I love, and won three times, the last by
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  five thirty four points, tell Tom to get it done. It will
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  be appreciated by all, Trump said on social media on Saturday morning,
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  kicking off the fight. Trump included a phone number with an Arkansas
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  area code. The Associated Press called the number, but no one answered,
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  and the voicemail box was full. Cotton, a member of Republican leadership,
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  reiterated his opposition to permanent daylight saving time in a social media
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  post of his own Saturday afternoon. He is not the only GOB
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  senator who opposes the policy, though he has been among the most
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  vocal opponents. No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress
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  has enacted permanent daylight savings time multiple times before, and repealed it.
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  Each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter, Cotton
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  wrote. Arkansans don't want their kids going to school in the pitch
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  dark, and I'll always put Arkansas first. The fight over changing the
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  clock went on all Saturday, and Trump promptly fired back in another
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  post. If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them
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  an extra hour of daylight, and more importantly, they wouldn't have to
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  run all over their houses, farms, workplaces, and everywhere else, twice a
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  year, having to change their clocks and often forgetting to do so,
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  Trump said, adding that that is really putting Arkansas first. As his
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  motorcade was rolling back to the White House from his golf course,
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  Trump added that a tableful of very distinguished people just told me
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  that the hate, immediately after a mandatory time change, going home at
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  night, and it's dark. It's depressing, Trump continued. One of the gentlemen
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  stated that, I just hate going home in darkness. It's also, in
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  crime ridden blue states, a lot more dangerous to be walking home
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  in the dark. A twenty twenty five poll from the Associated Press
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  Nork Center for Public Affairs Research shows that if forced to choose,
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  most Americans would prefer to keep that extra hour of daylight in
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  the evening. Only twelve percent of US adults favor the current system
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  of daylight saving time, which requires people in most states to change
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  their clocks twice a year, while forty seven percent oppose it and
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  forty percent are neutral. Members of Congress have long been interested in
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  then potential benefits and costs of daylight saving time since it was
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  first adopted as a wartime measure in nineteen forty two. The Senate
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  passed a bill four years ago to make daylight saving time permanent,
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  but it stalled in the House. This is not the first time
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  Trump has released personal information about a senator. While competing for the
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  twenty sixteen Republican presidential nomination, the late Senator Lindsey Graham of South
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  Carolina described Trump as unfit for office after Trump's denigrated the military
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  service of Senator John McCain of Arizona. Trump then released Graham's personal
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  cell phone number, that prompted a viral video in which the Senator
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  dramatically destroyed a series of flip phones. Graham later became a close
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  ally of Trump. In contrast, although they share many of the same
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  policy positions, Trump and Cotton are not known to be close. Cotton,
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  one of the Republican Party's most prominent national security voices, has advocated
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  for a more hawkish approach on E Iran, particularly as Trump entertains
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  pauses and military strikes amid the seven month war. In Trump's first
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  term, Cotton was a critic of the President's attempts at overhauling the
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  nation's sentencing laws, calling the proposal a jailbreak. Earlier this year, Cotton
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  had temporarily defied Trump's attempts at stalling the confirmation process for his
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  own nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton. The president had
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  wanted to ensure his interim pick for the intelligence job, Bill Poultey,
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  would be able to serve in that role, at least briefly, when
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  the former Director, Tulsi Gabbard, left the job. But the appointment of
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  Polte, who had no known national security credentials, drew bipartisan condemnation from
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  Capitol Hill, and Cotton had tried to expedite Clayton's confirmation process, which
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  could have prevented Polte from being installed as acting director. But Trump
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  ultimately ordered Clayton to not appear before Cotton's committee for his confirmation
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  hearing, and Polte served in the job for several weeks this summer.
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  Clayton was eventually confirmed by the Senate in late July. Associated Press
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  Writer Mary Claire Jelonick in Washington contributed to this report.