Trump turns on GOP ally and shares his personal PHONE NUMBER demanding Americans call him in fight over change to daylight saving time

Donald Trump attempted to turn up the heat on fellow Republican Tom Cotton in the fight to change daylight saving time, even giving out what appeared to be the Arkansas senator's personal cell phone number.

The President spent much of Saturday speaking out in favor of The Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent. 

The bill passed the House in July but faces roadblocks among Republicans, including Cotton, who is strongly opposed. 

'For some reason, Tom is stopping the Bill and, in the Senate, it´s very easy to do, it only takes one!' Trump wrote on social media, noting that passing the bill would give professional golfers more time on the greens. 

'So, everyone in Arkansas, a State I love, and won 3 times, the last by by 34 points, tell Tom to, GET IT DONE! It will be appreciated by all,' Trump said.

Trump included a phone number with an Arkansas area code. When The Daily Mail called the number, no one answered and the voicemail box was full. 

The President made multiple Truth Social posts in favor of the bill, including one that included a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp supporting it.

One post read: 'I don’t know about anyone else, but a table full of very distinguished people just told me that they HATE, immediately after a mandatory time change, going home at night – and it’s DARK. It’s depressing!' 

Donald Trump attempted to turn up the heat on fellow Republican Tom Cotton over proposed changes to daylight saving time by giving out what appeared to be the Arkansas senator's personal cell phone number

The bill passed the House in July but faces roadblocks among Republicans, including Cotton, who is strongly opposed

Proponents, including the White House, argue that the change would provide more daylight during the times that Americans are most active. 

Detractors said permanent daylight saving time would lead to darker and potentially more hazardous winter mornings when children will be waiting for school buses and parents driving to work in darkness.

It was a remarkable escalation on Trump's part of a longstanding fixation shared by both men who stand on opposite sides of the debate. Trump supporting making daylight saving time permanent, and Cotton vociferously opposed. 

The squabble comes just weeks before the midterms, when Republicans would prefer the president to focus on talking about affordability issues and the party's achievements. Cotton is also up for reelection this November, although that race is not expected to be competitive.

Daylight saving time is the period between spring and fall when clocks in most parts of the United States are set one hour ahead of standard time. 

Not all states observe it and under the bill states can opt out of the change if their respective legislatures act to do so before the bill's enactment.

Cotton, a member of Republican leadership, reiterated his opposition to permanent daylight saving time in a social media post of his own Saturday afternoon. 

He is not the only GOP senator who opposes the policy, though he has been among the most vocal opponents.

Both men stand on opposite sides of the debate to pass The Sunshine Protection Act

'No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Savings Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,' Cotton wrote. 

'Arkansans don't want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I´ll always put Arkansas first.'

Trump, who is spending the day at his northern Virginia golf club before traveling to Ohio later Saturday, promptly fired back.

'If Tom Cotton were putting Arkansas first, he would give them an extra hour of daylight and, more importantly, they wouldn't have to run all over their houses, farms, work places, and everywhere else, twice a year, having to change their Clocks, and often forgetting to do so,' Trump said, adding that 'that is really putting Arkansas FIRST.'

A 2025 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that if forced to choose, most Americans would prefer to keep that extra hour of daylight in the evening. 

Only 12 percent of US adults favor the current system of daylight saving time, which requires people in most states to change their clocks twice a year, while 47 percent oppose it and 40 percent are neutral.

Members of Congress have long been interested in the potential benefits and costs of daylight saving time since it was first adopted as a wartime measure in 1918. 

The Senate passed a bill four years ago to make daylight saving time permanent, but it stalled in the House.

Proponents, including the White House, argue that the change would provide more daylight during the times that Americans are most active 

It is not the first time Trump has resorted to publishing personal contact information to bolster his cause.

While competing for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, the late Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina described Trump as 'unfit for office' after Trump denigrated the military service of Senator John McCain of Arizona. 

Trump then released Graham's personal cellphone number. That prompted a viral video in which the senator dramatically destroyed a series of flip phones.

Graham later became a close ally of Trump. In contrast, although they share many of the same policy positions, Trump and Cotton are not known to be close.

Cotton, one of the Republican Party's most prominent national security voices, has advocated for a more hawkish approach on Iran, particularly as Trump entertains pauses in military strikes amid the seven-month war. 

In Trump's first term, Cotton was a critic of the president's attempts at overhauling the nation's sentencing laws, calling the proposal a 'jailbreak.'

Earlier this year, Cotton had temporarily defied Trump's attempts at stalling the confirmation process for his own nominee for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton. 

The president had wanted to ensure his interim pick for the intelligence job, Bill Pulte, would be able to serve in that role at least briefly when the former director, Tulsi Gabbard, left the job.

But the appointment of Pulte, who had no known national security credentials, drew bipartisan condemnation from Capitol Hill and Cotton had tried to expedite Clayton's confirmation process, which could have prevented Pulte from being installed as acting director.

But Trump ultimately ordered Clayton to not appear before Cotton's committee for his confirmation hearing, and Pulte served in the job for several weeks this summer. Clayton was eventually confirmed by the Senate in late July.