International Courant
EXCLUSIVE: Senate Majority Chief John Thune is getting a tricky job executed.
“Senate Republicans have been dedicated to getting President Trump’s nominees by,” Thune, who’s been on the job steering the Senate for six weeks, instructed Fox Information in an unique nationwide digital interview.
Thune was interviewed forward of Brooke Rollins’s affirmation as secretary of agriculture, which delivered to 16 the variety of Trump nominees permitted by the Senate.
Solely 11 Cupboard nominees have been permitted by this date eight years in the past throughout Trump’s first time period within the White Home.
SENATE CONFIRMS ANOTHER CONTROVERSIAL TRUMP CABINET NOMINEE
Senate Majority Chief Sen. John Thune of South Dakota speaks to reporters on Feb. 11, 2025. (AP Picture/Jacquelyn Martin)
And on this date 4 years in the past, the Senate had confirmed solely seven of then-President Biden’s Cupboard nominees.
Rollins’ affirmation adopted the confirmations of two of Donald Trump’s most controversial nominees: former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of nationwide intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of well being and human providers.
Gabbard and Kennedy have been confirmed on close to party-line votes in a chamber the GOP controls with a 53-47 majority.
“I feel that the Senate Republicans have confirmed that we’re united,” the South Dakota Republican stated.
Thune, a two-decade Senate veteran who served in GOP management the previous few years earlier than succeeding longtime chief Sen. Mitch McConnell as the highest Republican within the chamber, emphasised the staff effort.
HEAD HERE FOR LATEST FOX NEWS REPORTING ON PRESIDENT TRUMP’S FIRST 100 DAYS BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE
“What you attempt to do is simply attempt to make the folks round you higher,” Thune stated. “We have quite a lot of expertise within the Senate, individuals who … we wish to deploy and make the most of and allow them to use their presents and skills [to] get issues executed round right here that should be executed.”
The senator pointed to his father, a former faculty athlete and coach, who he stated would advise him to “make the additional cross if any individual’s received a greater shot. So what we have been making an attempt to do is search for a chance to make the additional cross. And I feel that it does actually make the most of the nice expertise we now have right here within the Senate.”
Thune says he is been assembly “pretty recurrently” with the president, in particular person, on the cellphone and thru textual content.
President Donald Trump talks to Senate Majority Chief John Thune, R-S.D., left, and Home Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., after talking on the Nationwide Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Feb. 6, 2025. (AP Picture/J. Scott Applewhite)
“It is a common pipeline,” he stated. “His staff has been actually good, too, about working with our staff right here. I feel we have had a really constructive working relationship. And I inform folks, our incentives are aligned. All of us wish to get to the identical vacation spot.”
Thune hasn’t at all times had a constructive relationship with the usually unpredictable Trump.
Trump was important of Thune within the years after his first time period and briefly thought of backing a major problem in opposition to the senator as he ran for re-election in 2022.
Thune stated that “like lots of people,” he is had “variations with the president up to now.”
“However I feel proper now, we perceive the issues that we wish to get executed in the middle of his time period and the chance that we now have, which is uncommon in politics, to have unified management of the federal government, Home, Senate and White Home. We have to maximize that, and so as to try this, we have to have a really constructive relationship during which there’s common communication,” Thune emphasised.
McConnell was the one Senate Republican to vote in opposition to confirming Kennedy and Gabbard. McConnell, who suffered from polio as a toddler and is a significant proponent of vaccines, was important of Kennedy’s historical past of high-profile vaccine skepticism.
Mitch McConnell (Andrew Harnik/Getty Pictures)
“I am a survivor of childhood polio. In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save thousands and thousands of lives from devastating illnesses throughout America and world wide. I can’t condone the re-litigation of confirmed cures and neither will thousands and thousands of People who credit score their survival and high quality of life to scientific miracles,” McConnell stated after the Kennedy vote.
Trump, who’s lengthy criticized McConnell, took intention once more.
“I don’t know if he had polio. All I can let you know about him is he shouldn’t have been a pacesetter. He is aware of that. He voted in opposition to Bobby. He votes in opposition to nearly every thing. He’s a really bitter man,” Trump charged.
Thune, interviewed after Gabbard’s affirmation and forward of the ultimate vote on Kennedy, stated the 82-year-old McConnell is “nonetheless lively up right here and nonetheless a powerful voice on points he is obsessed with, together with nationwide safety.”
“So on the subject of these points, he has outsized affect and a voice that all of us take note of,” Thune stated. “He is received views on a few of these nominees that perhaps do not observe precisely with the place I or different Republicans have come down, however we respect his positions on these, a few of these noms, and I do know that on quite a lot of huge stuff forward of us, he will be with us. He is a staff participant.”
Thune added, “I’ve had loads of consultations with him by the years and in latest months and weeks, and we’ll proceed to succeed in out to him after we assume it is smart to get a lay of the land that, primarily based on his expertise, he may also help us navigate.”
Senate Majority Chief Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, proper, speaks to reporters, Feb. 11, 2025, after a Senate coverage luncheon on Capitol Hill. (AP Picture/Jacquelyn Martin)
Whereas he is loved a slew of affirmation victories this week, Thune is life like.
“I be ok with the way it’s gone thus far, however we have some actually exhausting sledding forward. We all know that, and we simply should maintain our heads down and do the work,” he cautioned.
Whereas confirming Trump’s Cupboard is at present job No. 1, Thune is juggling quite a few duties.
“Clearly, most of our time has been occupied transferring the president’s staff and getting his nominees confirmed, and we’ll proceed to do this. However as we go about that course of, we’re in search of home windows, too, to maneuver vital laws,” he stated.
He pointed to the Laken Riley Act, rapidly handed by the Senate and the Home and signed into legislation by Trump.
The controversial measure, which is known as after a nursing scholar who was killed by an unlawful immigrant whereas jogging on the College of Georgia’s campus, requires federal immigration authorities to detain unlawful immigrants discovered responsible of theft-related crimes.
Thune identified that the laws grabbed bipartisan help, however he added that it is “a invoice that was conscious of the election mandate, and it was a invoice that divided Democrats and united Republicans.”
CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
He additionally chastised his predecessor as Senate majority chief, Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York.
Thune argued that in Schumer’s tenure “the ground would get slowed down. You recognize, votes would take perpetually. We’re simply making an attempt to make extra environment friendly use of individuals’s time and get this place sort of working on a schedule once more. We will proceed to do this and getting again to common order.”
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter primarily based in New Hampshire.
Senate Majority Chief Thune says that is the rationale why he and Trump are working effectively collectively
World Information,Subsequent Large Factor in Public Knowledg
