(The Hill) Senate Republicans are rallying behind Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) after President Trump declined to support the GOP leader serving another term following the midterm election.
Many Republican senators say Thune will have their full support, even if Trump backs a challenger, because of the Senate leader’s refusal to abolish the filibuster to advance Trump’s top legislative priorities, such as the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act.
“There’s a lot of respect for John Thune. There’s a lot of recognition of how he works and how difficult his job is and a belief that he’s doing it really well under difficult circumstances,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.).
Moran said Republican senators have been willing to yield to the president on a lot of issues but that they would draw a line against letting Trump push Thune out of his job or pick a replacement.
“I also think there are some things where the Senate seems willing to accede their privileges, but I think who our leader is, there’s a real sense that that belongs to us,” he said.
Even Senate conservatives who have ratcheted up pressure on Thune to keep the upper chamber in session during the August recess to debate the SAVE America Act acknowledge that Thune has had to navigate a political minefield as GOP leader.
“It’s a hard job, it’s really a hard job,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a leading proponent of the SAVE America Act.
Asked if he continues to have confidence in Thune despite the growing criticism from the White House, Scott noted that presidents often get frustrated with the Senate’s 60-vote hurdle to passing their legislative priorities.
“I’m sure if I were president of the United States, I would be frustrated if everything I wanted didn’t get done. So that’s probably pretty common,” the Florida senator said.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said he’s doesn’t “know of any movements to replace” Thune even though Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration over his agenda getting bogged down in the Senate.
“I think the president and John like each other. I think these are tough issues and they obviously disagree over things like the filibuster,” Kennedy said.
Trump last week insisted in an interview with Punchbowl News that Republican voters are “not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans” in Congress.
But even Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill aren’t buying that claim.
“I think Republicans are angry at all of us, I mean the voters. I think the voters are angry, period. And I think they’re angry most about … cost of living, and I think that’s what this election is going to be primarily about,” Kennedy said.
“One of the reasons that the democratic socialists are winning elections is because they stand for something. Now what they stand for sucks, but a lot of their support is coming from young people who don’t know history,” the Louisiana senator continued.
GOP lawmakers think Trump has caused political headwinds for their party by not being more attuned to the affordability crisis, which Trump downplayed as a “hoax” issue driven by Democrats.
And while Trump has traveled around the country to talk about his economic accomplishments, he is prone to veering away from his script to hit on hot-button political issues, such as calls to pass the SAVE America Act to avert fraud in the upcoming election.
Thune has tried to shrug off Trump’s criticisms in recent weeks, but they’re becoming tougher to downplay as the president continues to suggest that the Senate GOP leader isn’t getting his job done and that voters aren’t happy with Republicans in Congress as a result.
Thune said he almost “expected” Trump to withhold his endorsement for him serving another term as Senate leader.
“That’s probably to be expected,” Thune said with a trace of resignation in his voice.
And Thune argued just as the Senate was leaving that his Republican colleagues have done a lot of heavy lifting to get the president’s agenda passed, disputing Trump’s accusations that they’re not doing their jobs.
Thune said he and other Senate Republicans feel they are getting a lot done for Trump.
“I think we’ve had a really productive run. There are a couple things I said right from the very beginning are going to be difficult if not impossible — frankly more impossible — to do,” he said of Trump’s calls to pass the SAVE America Act and abolish the filibuster.
“That’s the reality I have to deal with,” Thune said of Democratic opposition to voting reforms and Republican opposition to lowering the threshold for passing legislation from 60 votes to a simple majority.
The GOP leader said the president is “entitled to his views,” and Thune is “fine with that,” but he argued getting Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed despite strong reservations from a handful of GOP senators, coupled with the prolonged absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), was a “good, solid win for the team and obviously … not an easy one.”
“We’ll keep grinding away and let the chips fall where they may,” Thune added.
One Thune ally said Trump’s public criticism of the Senate leader is a tactic he is using to put “pressure” on Thune to pass as much of the president’s agenda as possible and predicted it could “change” after the election.
Even so, Trump’s refusal to say whether Thune is “still the man for the job” — coupled with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s statement that Trump’s “patience is running out” with Thune’s job performance — has fueled the appearance that their personal relationship is on shaky ground.
Thune has winced or hinted at his frustration at times when asked about the latest rumble of dissatisfaction from Trump but has mainly stayed focused on enacting as much of his agenda as possible before Democrats have a chance to win back control of one or both chambers of Congress.
Yet a growing number of Senate Republicans see Trump and his low approval ratings — especially on the economy — as a bigger political problem than strategic decisions made by Thune and his leadership team.
GOP lawmakers are seeking to distance themselves from Trump ahead of the November election as polls show independent voters moving away from the president and Republican voters losing enthusiasm for him.
More than half the Senate GOP conference pushed back against the Justice Department’s proposal to establish a nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for Trump’s MAGA allies at a fiery meeting with Blanche in May.
GOP senators also quashed Trump’s push for $1 billion in funding for the new 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom and are now currently resisting his call for immediate passage of a budget resolution to fund the unpopular military conflict with Iran.
A group of Senate Republicans last week bristled over the White House intervening in a stopgap spending bill to fund the government until Dec. 11 by adding language to delay the implementation of a ban on hemp-derived THC products — a policy rider that deeply divided their conference.
One GOP senator fumed the move was “not rational,” given the uproar it created within the conference, to delay the implementation of the ban by only a month.
“I don’t understand why this is an issue. What’s the heartburn over just a few weeks? They say there’s someone very close to the White House who has an interest in this,” the lawmaker added, referring to media reports that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’s son-in-law, Bret Worley, is the CEO of companies that make hemp-derived intoxicating gummies and vapes.
GOP senators vented their complaints over the hemp-products rider to White House staff during a closed-door meeting but later acceded to the White House’s will on the issue by voting early Saturday morning to table an amendment sponsored by Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) to strip the White House-backed hemp language from the government funding stopgap.
“This issue has got everybody in the conference spun up,” the senator added. “If the president were to veto a CR [continuing resolution] over this? Wow. But that’s kind of the worry.”
