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The Senate’s rules were made “by a heroin addict with a socket wrench.” In a gridlocked chamber, “doing nothing is very hard … you never know when you’re finished.” John Thune did everything but “bark like a dog” to get a deal with Democrats.
One of those lines would get any other lawmaker outsized attention, but all are from a single day in the life of Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. He’s been the Senate’s one-man joke machine for nearly a decade, but he’s getting more serious these days: On the same day as his quip-filled speeches, he threatened to derail Republicans’ agenda in a bid to get his party to address the rising cost of living.
Kennedy’s not a moderate like Lisa Murkowski, a contrarian like Rand Paul, or untethered and near retirement like Thom Tillis. Yet President Donald Trump’s second term has seen Kennedy transforming into a folksy force who’s willing to maximize his leverage and platform as a member of some of the Hill’s most powerful committees.
“I play outside the pocket. Just always have and always will,” Kennedy told Semafor of his approach, which delights and puzzles his colleagues at turns. “And that’s why I’ll never be part of leadership. I don’t completely fit in.”
“I’ve always thought that’s one of my best qualities,” he added. “And sometimes that pisses them off, and sometimes it doesn’t. I do try to be a team player.”
The twangy second-term senator doesn’t always go easy on his team. Kennedy fileted former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a committee hearing over her agency’s ad spending, directly contributing to her subsequent firing by Trump. He was one of the Banking Committee’s first GOP members to speak out against the Trump-backed investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
He also predicted months ago that Democrats would never fund ICE and that the Department of Homeland Security would endure a lengthy shutdown — nudging Thune and other leaders to partially fund DHS in response, despite conservative criticism of the idea.
He has withheld his support for the banking panel’s proposal to overhaul cryptocurrency regulation and aired frustration with the administration for not leaning on the House to pass the Senate’s housing affordability legislation.
“He’s a clever bugger,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told Semafor. “He’s definitely flexed. No question about it; it’s hard to miss.”
Cramer likened Kennedy to the TV attorney Ben Matlock, who also used an aw-shucks demeanor to disarm witnesses. What does Kennedy think of that?
“I guess that’s a compliment. I’d rather be called Brad Pitt,” he told Semafor.
Budget Committee Chair Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., deadpanned some fainter praise: “He’s … Kennedy-esque.” (Kennedy wrote in his bestselling book last year that Graham might “vomit in the fish tank” during a dinner party.)
Some Republicans see Kennedy as flying too close to the sun with his occasionally adversarial approach to a White House that prizes loyalty above all else. He supported the Fed’s resistance of Trump’s calls for lower interest rates and urged the Trump administration to show its math when it tried to fire a central bank governor for alleged mortgage fraud.
Just last week he warned that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is giving Trump “incredibly bad advice” on a Spirit Airlines bailout that was later scrapped.
Kennedy said he and Trump have a “good” relationship but that he’s “not much into being a groupie” either.
“I don’t call him every day. I don’t go hang around over there when I need him. I call him. I got a cell number. He calls me back. Sometimes he says ‘yes,’ sometimes he says ‘no,’ but I don’t bother him there a lot,” Kennedy said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
In retrospect, Kennedy made clear he wouldn’t rubber-stamp Trump’s nominees nine years ago when he flummoxed one judicial pick by asking basic legal questions.
“He’s probably a nominee’s worst nightmare,” said Tillis, who helped end the criminal probe into Powell by temporarily blocking Trump’s nominee for Fed chair.
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Kennedy, Graham, Thune the majority leader, and Majority Whip John Barrasso sat down late last month ahead of a pivotal budget vote setting up a party-line immigration funding bill. Kennedy made sure there were no staff in the room, he told Semafor, because “if anything we talked about leaked, I could figure out who it was.”
He had reason to be nervous; it was a tense moment. Kennedy told his leadership that he had the votes to derail their narrow immigration enforcement bill by adding several amendments: one to exempt poll workers from taxes, another encouraging homeowners to sell by pegging the tax-free capital gains limit of $500,000 to inflation, and a third to prohibit credit reports from including medical debt that’s “killing people.”
Even as his colleagues pushed to leave Washington for recess, Kennedy threatened to delay the entire budget vote if his proposals didn’t get voted on.
Thune, Barrasso, and Graham implored him to keep the bill clean; Kennedy mostly agreed, aside from forcing a vote on a Trump-backed voter ID bill. That vote demonstrated the legislation didn’t have 50 votes in the Senate GOP, a major revelation after months of intraparty fighting.
“I didn’t faint with surprise,” Kennedy said of the result.
“We talked very frankly about this,” he added, and he ultimately gave in “because we need to get the DHS open.” The department reopened a few days later.
The next big Kennedy tripwire is a vote on a second crypto regulation bill that’s a top priority for the Trump administration; in the Banking Committee, one Republican defection could kill the proposal.
Kennedy’s expected to eventually help advance it. But he’s also previously spoken out about past crypto bills being too industry-friendly and challenged earlier Republican attempts to schedule a committee vote.
“He is very, very difficult to work with,” one GOP senator told Semafor. “He also used to be really nice — and now he can really be mean.”
Kennedy said he hasn’t changed his approach: “Nope. It’s the same me. I’ve always done it this way, even back in Louisiana.”
Room for Disagreement
In addition to the Banking, Judiciary and Budget committees, Kennedy also has a plum seat on the Appropriations Committee, where he leads the energy and water funding bill. It looks like at times he makes life difficult for Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, by questioning the committee’s work.
Yet Collins told Semafor that Kennedy is “an active chairman who wants to be leading.”
“He’s very smart. He cares about the process, has a great sense of humor. And you never know where he’s going to be on an issue,” Collins said.
Burgess and Eleanor’s View
Because Kennedy doesn’t generally operate under the omertà his colleagues often favor on politically sensitive questions, he’s a favorite of the press. We’ve seen him patiently answer reporters’ questions for 30 minutes straight after a tedious party lunch.
But he may be in even more demand now, as fellow Republicans internalize that Kennedy is getting better at using the power every senator holds to slow the gears of the system. His evolution reveals a lot about how Congress works; the delicacy of such influence-wielding can even confuse party leaders and top GOP staffers.
Kennedy still is a team player. He’s also a lot more than a spicy quote — he’s using his leverage to do things in a Capitol where it’s a lot easier to do very little.
Notable
- Kennedy has expressed reservations about passing the crypto bill without action on the housing bill, Punchbowl News reported.
- Kennedy has disrupted the Appropriations Committee, Politico reported.