Senate Republicans are frustrated, though likely not surprised, that their Democratic colleagues are working to delay confirmation votes on President Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees.

That includes CIA Director nominee John Ratcliffe, who was blocked from a swift confirmation vote on Tuesday by an objection from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), despite Ratcliffe having been cleared by the Senate Intelligence Committee with a strong bipartisan vote, the Daily Caller reported.

But Senate Republicans are in no mood for games, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) warned his comrades on the opposite side of the aisle that they'd better be prepared to work through the nights and weekend because Trump's nominees would ultimately receive an up or down vote "the easy way or the hard way."

Democrat objects to Trump nominee Ratcliffe

On Tuesday, Sen. Murphy objected to a move toward a confirmation vote for CIA Director-designate Ratcliffe, even though the Senate Intelligence Committee had approved the nominee in a bipartisan fashion, based on claims that Ratcliffe had "politicized intelligence" and would "spin highly sensitive intelligence his agency will gather for political purposes."

That objection came just one day after Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech on Monday that his Democrats would cooperate with Republicans on President Trump's nominees and "will neither rubber stamp nominees we feel are grossly unqualified, nor will we reflexively oppose nominees that deserve serious consideration."

By all accounts, Ratcliffe is "qualified" for the position, as he'd previously been confirmed by the Senate to serve as Trump's director of national intelligence during his first term, and was just cleared by the Intel Committee with only three Democratic members voting against him.

"I hope nobody was making any plans for the weekend"

Tuesday evening, Sen. Cotton delivered a message to "obstructionist Democrats" on the Senate floor, and said, "I don’t really understand the objection to Mr. Ratcliffe. He was confirmed by the Senate to be the director of National Intelligence. He was fully vetted by the bipartisan process on the Senate Intelligence Committee. We voted him out yesterday on a 14-3 vote."

"Sen. Schumer stood here yesterday and talked about how we're gonna vote on 'highly qualified, capable nominees with integrity,' which John Ratcliffe is," he continued, yet noted that the "only vote we got yesterday" was for Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as secretary of State.

"Now we're not gonna have a vote today, and apparently we're not gonna have a vote tomorrow, which means I hope nobody was making any plans for the weekend, or the evenings, because we’re going to get these nominees confirmed starting with Mr. Ratcliffe, and then moving onto Mr. Hegseth and moving onto Ms. Noem -- the easy way or the hard way," Cotton said.

The Arkansas senator added, "We tried to cooperate with the Democrats -- the cooperation has not been forthcoming -- so I guess it’s going to be the hard way, starting on Thursday."

My message to obstructionist Democrats:

Don’t make plans this weekend. We’re going to get President Trump’s nominees confirmed the easy collegial way, or apparently the hard way. pic.twitter.com/DJrA09bTqk

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 21, 2025

Dems playing "procedural games" to deny Trump's Cabinet

Later, Sen. Cotton took to the floor again and encouraged his Democratic colleagues to explain in a debate why they oppose Ratcliffe's nomination, and asked, "Should we be denying the country a Senate-confirmed CIA director in such dangerous times for no good reason?"

"What this is really about is trying to drag out all of these nominations to play procedural games as we’re about to with Pete Hegseth’s nomination to try to deny President Trump his cabinet in a prompt and timely fashion," he continued, and a few moments later reiterated his warning to "don't make plans for the weekend" because the confirmation votes would happen as soon as possible whether Democrats liked it or not.

As for Sen. Murphy, he wrote in a Wednesday morning X post, "Republicans wanted to rush through a CIA Director with a troubling history of politicizing intelligence, acting like they care about law and order a day after most of them said nothing about Trump's pardon of the most violent Jan 6th rioters. Yes. You better believe I objected."