It was a rough Friday for President Donald Trump’s sense of chronology. At a midday news conference, the president was uncertain as to when the Civil War ended (“Was it 1869? Or whatever,” he said). He was similarly unsure as to the timeline for his “big beautiful bill.” At the same news conference, Trump admitted that July 4, the date he has consistently set as the deadline for signing the legislation, is “not the end-all. It can go longer.” Just a few hours later, though, he changed his tune: “The House of Representatives must be ready to send it to my desk before July 4th,” he wrote on Truth Social.

Senate Republicans did their best over the weekend to comply with Trump’s demand. They succeeded in moving the bill closer to a final vote but as of Sunday evening were still settling on the bill’s actual text. And in the process, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina — Republicans’ best chance at holding one of their most vulnerable Senate seats — announced he will not seek re-election. The president’s on-again, off-again deadline epitomizes the GOP’s slipshod rush to pass the megabill, which would cut taxes mostly for the wealthy while nearly 12 million people would lose their health insurance. This Republican recklessness reflects both the president’s grip on the party and his utter lack of interest in the bill’s details.

Republican leaders entered the weekend without even knowing what parts of the bill will survive the Senate vote.

The July 4 deadline is, to be clear, entirely self-imposed. There is no statutory reason the bill must become law this coming weekend. The next major legislative deadline is not until August, when the U.S. government risks breaching the debt ceiling. On that timeline, House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and other Republican leaders in Congress would have additional weeks to negotiate with holdouts and tweak the bill’s language to qualify for the Senate’s budget reconciliation process.

Instead, even before the weekend began, Senate Republicans had to push back the vote after Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough said dozens of provisions did not meet the chamber’s rules to bypass the filibuster. The GOP will be able to save some of those provisions, says federal budget expert Bobby Kogan of the Center for American Progress, but Republicans still lost hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts they were counting on to offset the bill’s tax cuts that are heavily tilted toward the wealthy. MacDonough’s rulings came after considering arguments from staffers of both parties; if Republicans were not rushing, noted Kogan, they would have more time to make sure the text complied with Senate rules.

Instead, in their hurry, Republican leaders entered the weekend without even knowing what parts of the bill will survive the Senate vote. At one ideological end of the caucus, senators like Tillis and Susan Collins of Maine balked at steeper cuts to Medicaid. At the other end, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin pushed for more spending cuts. And there was no final agreement on a major increase in the cap on deducting state and local taxes, which blue-state Republican representatives have insisted on.

Republican leaders are still negotiating deals to pass the legislation. But already we have seen House Republicans admit they did not read their chamber’s version of the bill before voting for it. Now their Senate colleagues will most likely have to do the same and hope they do not get any nasty surprises.

And remember, the bill is massively unpopular, and it becomes even less popular the more voters learn about its provisions. Eight years ago, Republicans thought a tax cut bill would save them in the midterms; instead, that bill was so unpopular that they largely stopped talking about it before that campaign was even finished. Surely Republicans want to avoid reprising that disaster, so why not take a beat over the holiday, reassess and see whether there are other bills to give the president a legislative victory?

The president has been consistently incurious as to the bill’s contents.

The answer is: There is no plan B. The megabill is not just the most important legislation of Trump’s first year; at this point, it is the only major legislation of Trump’s first year. If the bill is “big” and “beautiful,” that is by default. Republicans have to pass it because Trump wants them to pass something.

What that something looks like does not matter to the president, who has been consistently incurious as to the bill’s contents. Earlier this month, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Trump was surprised to learn the Senate bill would limit a tax on health care providers that states use to fund Medicaid — a provision that was a key source of savings. On Thursday, as my colleague Steve Benen noted, the president claimed: “Your Medicaid is left alone. It’s left the same.” In fact, the bill would kick millions off Medicaid. On Friday, he claimed — for the second time in two days — that the bill would eliminate taxes on Social Security. It would not.

But whether this bill would cut taxes on Social Security — or throw millions off their health care or batter rural hospitals — is ultimately immaterial to the president. All that matters is he has a piece of paper to sign that cuts taxes for him and his wealthy friends and donors. Trump has his wish, and in today’s Republican Party, everything else comes second to making his wish come true.