As it turns out, Trump has hinted at his motivation.

The morning after a dominant Democratic performance in the 2025 elections, the president told Senate Republicans that if they agreed to put an end to legislative filibusters, the change would make it “impossible to beat” Republicans in upcoming elections. “If we do what I’m saying,” he added, Democrats will “most likely never obtain power.”

He made a related pitch hours later on Fox News, telling Bret Baier that getting rid of the filibuster would allow Republicans to approve unnamed “good things” that would make it difficult to beat the GOP in the near future.

Trump: "I think if we got rid of the filibuster, we would approve so many good things -- common sense things, wonderful things -- that it would be hard to beat us."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-11-05T23:29:43.393Z

......“Voter reform” is itself a phrase that’s ridiculous and terrifying in equal measure. There are plenty of things in need of reform in the U.S., but there’s no need to add voters to the list.

Indeed, consider the related data points from recent weeks:

At the White House’s behest, Republicans in some states are engaging in brazen gerrymandering, using mid-decade redistricting to win congressional races before they happen.

The Justice Department is fighting to acquire voter registration lists and election data in several states for reasons that still haven’t been explained.

The Republican administration has chosen election deniers to serve in key federal election roles, leading The New York Times to note that conspiracy theorists “who worked to destabilize and discredit election results after 2020” will now have “the power to potentially interfere with future contests.”

Trump’s DOJ also deployed federal election observers to monitor elections in California and New Jersey.
The president is lobbying for the total elimination of early voting.

It’s against this backdrop that Trump also wants Senate Republicans to kill the chamber’s filibuster rule, clearing the way for something he called “voter reform” — and a political dynamic in which Democrats will “most likely never obtain power.”

In isolation, each of these stories matters, but taken together, we’re talking about what appears to be a multifaceted campaign against elections, launched by a president whose contempt for the democratic process is unsubtle.