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So far this year, whether deliberately or not, President Donald Trump has managed to make Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s job as challenging as possible.
The president’s aggressive pursuit of his most politically tough priorities, like new voter ID requirements and killing the Senate’s legislative filibuster, is causing intraparty tension and creating constant distractions for Thune.
Trump’s timing keeps tripping up Senate Republicans, too, as his White House ballroom security request and “anti-weaponization” fund stalled an immigration funding bill while forcing Republicans into several hard votes.
But the clearest case of Trump rug-pulling Thune arrived at 3:54 a.m. Wednesday, when the president derailed a plan from the majority leader and Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton, R-Ark., that could have revived a critical expired surveillance law by the end of the week and blocked Bill Pulte, who’s alarmed people in both parties, from the post.
Just a few hours ago, it looked like Thune would pull it off — and clinch a bipartisan housing bill, turning a Trump affordability goal of 2026 into law. Now the housing deal is barely registering, overshadowed by the increasing strain between Trump and Thune and the muddle that’s become national intelligence policy.
“The president has put Leader Thune in a very difficult position. And I think Leader Thune’s done a terrific job in keeping the caucus united. And when there’s a post in the middle of the night asking for a total change in direction, it makes things very chaotic,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a close Thune ally. “We need a new DNI and we need to get FISA back.”
Those two goals seemed further away than ever on Wednesday afternoon after Trump directed his new director of national intelligence nominee, Jay Clayton, to skip a confirmation hearing organized by Cotton, the No. 3 GOP leader. For good measure, the president said he wouldn’t move Clayton until a new US attorney for New York is confirmed — a move that its two Democratic senators can block in the Judiciary Committee.
Trump’s demands didn’t end there: He wants to end home-state senators’ veto power over US attorney and judicial nominees; he wants a voter ID bill attached to a renewal of the surveillance bill, too. It was a laundry list of presidential frustrations that sparked questions even among MAGA allies about Republicans’ ability to work as a team.
“You got to play to win; don’t play to survive. And we’re not getting anything done. And the only thing we’ve got done is reconciliation,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., a former football coach, told Semafor about Trump’s view of Thune.
“The president’s playing hardball. You can tell he’s running on fumes with no sleep, traveling and all that,” Tuberville added.
The tension didn’t come from nowhere. Republicans, including Thune, were largely in the dark this week about Trump’s Iran deal. Trump infuriated GOP senators by effectively ousting two well-liked incumbents.
Yet Trump’s allies see the Senate leader as the problem: “Thune has been antagonizing him,” one person close to the White House said. “I mean, we’re still dealing with this blue slip BS, which is not a law. It’s a fake tradition they pretend is law.”
Thune’s allies paint a different picture, of a leader dedicated to making the often-plodding Senate work harder for Trump.
“Thune is doing cartwheels on a tightrope to move Trump’s agenda on the Hill. The problem is that Trump keeps throwing flaming bowling pins at him and expecting him to juggle at the same time,” said a person familiar with Trump and Thune’s relationship.
“With the prospect of a House Democrat majority, Trump should be doing everything he can to create a Senate Republican firewall,” this person added. “Instead, it looks like he’s trying to drag both chambers into the minority.”
Thune had little to say about the matter on Wednesday, though he said it was a “good question” why Trump sought to derail Clayton by tying his future to other issues and said the president makes his own decisions. Cotton called it “regrettable” that Trump asked Clayton not to appear at Wednesday’s hearing.
“The White House and President Trump have enjoyed working closely with Leader Thune and Senate Republicans to deliver on many important promises to the American people,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, naming tax cuts and border security. “We look forward to continuing these close relationships and fulfilling President Trump’s priorities that Americans elected him to enact.”
Senators in both parties remain concerned about Pulte’s qualifications, howver, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said after a party lunch that there’s “frustration” in the GOP about the state of affairs.
Know More
Steve Bannon, a MAGA pundit and outside Trump ally, gave a speech to a Las Vegas conference on Tuesday night declaring that that Democrats don’t want Pulte to serve as director of national intelligence because he will “get his hands on the stolen elections that the apparatus has allowed and covered up.”
Trump was alerted to that clip, according to a source familiar with the situation. Hours later, he posted on Truth Social slowing down Clayton’s confirmation.
The nomination certainly isn’t dead, but it’s now conditioned on Jamie McDonald’s confirmation to succeed him as US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Democrats may not return their “blue slip,” which would block McDonald and strand Clayton.
And GOP leaders see Trump’s voter ID bill as clearly short of votes in the Senate, whether it’s filibustered by Democrats or used as a pretext to end the filibuster itself: “We know we don’t have the votes,” Cornyn said.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he didn’t think Trump’s acts are ’intentional” sabotage but that “somebody’s not dialing the president into the complexities of what he’s done here.”
“It’s undermining our ability to produce the very results he wants,” Tillis said.
Room for Disagreement
Some Trump allies in the Senate understand his frustrations.
“If you look at what Trump’s doing, he’s doing things people want … they want voter ID, and they don’t want to be surveilled,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.
He said Trump’s actions are “not disruptive; he’s the president of the United States … the president gets to make his decision about what he wants to do and we get to make our decisions about what we want to do.”
Scott added that he didn’t think confirming Clayton quickly would have solved Congress’ surveillance law problem. He opposed a recent FISA reauthorization.
Burgess and Shelby’s View
Thune and Trump had a surprisingly strong relationship at the start of this Congress that overshadowed their past difficulties. (The president threatened to primary Thune after the senator panned Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.)
But now, dear reader, the HoneyThune is definitely over.
They could easily reconcile; Trump is transactional, and Thune is easygoing. And they’ll need to do so to keep the Senate in GOP control next year.
Notable
- Thune changed Senate rules last year to speed confirmation of Trump’s nominees, as The Associated Press reported.
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.