President Trump repeatedly berated Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Saturday over his stance on a daylight savings bill after posting the Republican Congress member's cell phone number on social media. In a morning Truth Social post, the president encouraged his supporters to call the senator and urge him to back legislation that would make…
Page A3From§Eachthe early evening edition — 3 October 2026
President posts senator's cell number over clock bill same week his convention chair admits rallies dropped votes
As it ran on the front
Saturday, the President of the United States posted a phone number on Truth Social. Not a hotline, not a press-office line — the personal cellphone of Senator Tom Cotton, a sitting Republican from Arkansas, with an instruction attached: call him, pressure him, move the Sunshine Protection Act off the Senate floor, where Cotton has it stalled. Cotton is "a friend of mine," the post said, the line that precedes the doxxing in every account of it. Fox, NBC, CBS and the Hill all ran the number within hours; a disagreement over clock changes became a crowd-sourced flood aimed at one senator's pocket, organized by his own party's president.
The week around that Saturday supplies the rest of the story, and none of it needed Cotton's help.…
…(cont) On September 8th, the account posted a graphic showing the American flag drawn large enough to cover Iceland. Iceland's government summoned the U.S. ambassador that same day to ask what had happened to its country on the president's map.
Three weeks later, on September 29th, the wire reported that Canada had made permanent daylight saving time the standard across more of its territory: the Northwest Territories announced they would stop changing clocks at all, less than a week after Manitoba made the same call. No ambassador was summoned. No senator's number went out on social media. Officials there simply announced the change — "gives residents what they've asked us for" — and the clocks stop moving in November.
On September 30th, two more items landed on the same day. In audio leaked and reported by Common Dreams, Ken Paxton, the chair of Trump's own Texas convention, was caught admitting the rally "dropped our numbers" — a Republican official conceding on tape that the president's signature campaign event cost his own party votes. That same day, the Hill reported that an official letter posted under the president's name, after a meeting with AI executives, misspelled the country he runs: "Unites States."
By Saturday the pattern needed no interpretation. Canada changed its clocks without any of it.
“You want to know what power looks like when it's scared? It doesn't send a bill to committee, it posts your cell number and lets strangers do the yelling for it — that's not persuasion, that's outsourcing the threat. And the same week the guy running the country can't spell "United States" and his own convention chair admits on tape the rallies cost votes, he's picking a fight with a senator over clocks instead of fixing either one.”
“Context matters. The president was advocating for a bill, not harassing a colleague — Cotton's a friend, the post said so right there. Did the number get posted? Technically. Did it work? The bill's still stalled, so if anything this proves the president has no real leverage over his own party, which — I should probably not be saying that part out loud.”
Earlier in this story
- President whose rallies dropped his own numbers broadcasts a senator's personal number instead. By Sal · the early bird edition, 3 October 2026
The receipts
· Permanent daylight saving time expands in Canada: 'Gives residents what they’ve asked us for' from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.