Trump, Cotton tussle over daylight savings after cell phone number leak

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 daylight savings time the permanent standard time. After Cotton stood by his position in a brief statement shared later Saturday, which didn’t directly mention the president or the leak, Trump went back on the offensive.

“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changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Savings Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” Cotton’s post read. “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”

Trump responded on Truth Social, “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.”

“That is really putting Arkansas FIRST, and I know, because, unlike Tom, I won that Great State, three times, and by almost 40 points!” the president continued.

The president has repeatedly pushed Congress to pass the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, claiming in his post that the move would decrease the national crime rate because “CRIMINALS DON’T LIKE WORKING IN THE LIGHT.”

In his first post targeting Cotton, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence , Trump blamed the GOP lawmaker for holding up the bill in the upper chamber after the House passed the legislation in July with broad bipartisan support.

“To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself. Call Tom on his cellphone,” the president wrote before sharing Cotton’s number. “Let him know.”

In one of two follow-up post on Saturday afternoon, the president pushed back on the senator’s resistance to changing his position on this bill and called Cotton’s stance “ego” driven.

Trump wrote in his other post that “a table full of very distinguished people” told him “they HATE” going home at night in the dark after the daylight savings time change.

“It’s depressing! One of the gentleman stated that, ‘I just hate going home in darkness,’” the president wrote. “It’s also, in Crime Ridden Blue States, a lot more dangerous to be walking home in the dark!”

As of 4 p.m. on Saturday, Cotton has not responded to Trump’s second and third Truth Social posts against him. The Hill has reached out to the Arkansas senator and the White House for comment.