Senate Majority Leader John Thune Returns To The Program

Senate Majority Leader John Thune returned to the program today. The YouTube video of the inteview is at my site.

The transcript:

HH: Joined now by the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Senator John Thune of South Dakota. Senator, good to have you back on. Thank you for joining me today. I’ve got a lot of stuff to cover with you, and I always start with my personal favorite, which is judicial confirmations. I think you’re setting some records, but do you want to confirm that for me?

JT: We are, Hugh. And I know you care deeply, and as do a lot of Americans. And they should, because nothing shapes the future of the country more than these lifetime appointments to the courts. So yeah, we are actually about ten ahead of where we were in the first Trump administration in terms of getting people on the bench. So we’re going to continue to focus on that, and on the executive branch noms as well. We’re going to move a package next week of 74 of those, which will keep us well ahead of where the first Trump administration was in terms of getting people confirmed to the departments and agencies that run the government as well. So it’s a focus. Personnel department, as we’ve talked about before, human resources, for better or worse, it’s something that’s a Constitutional imperative for us in the Senate, and we’re going to stay focused on it and especially when it comes to the court.

HH: You know, if in fact the Democrats take the White House down the road, they’ll have the same ability to confirm. But I think that’s the way the Constitution intended it – up or down votes by the Senate.

JT: Correct, and that’s, you know, and again, when we’ve got the House, the White House, and the Senate, which is rare, historically, I think, in the last hundred years, it’s only happened about four times. So we are working to clear, you know, virtually clear the executive calendar, which is both judicial and executive branch noms. And we’re going to stay focused on that. But yeah, it’s part of the Article I responsibility that we have. And I think that getting these on the floor for a vote and ensuring that we’re fulfilling that responsibility, and setting the country up for success by ensuring that we have Constitutionalist judges on the court, to me, is a really high priority.,

HH: It’s number one for me. Now Senator, every time you’re on, I get emails afterwards – why didn’t you ask him about the SAVE Act. People apparently do not hear that you support it, I support it. But I support the filibuster, and you reflect the caucus. Is it correct to say that there is not a majority of the Republican caucus that supports changing the filibuster?

JT: Yeah, that’s correct. I mean, and there are a lot of Republicans, and frankly, Hugh, you know, the President’s argument is that Democrats are going to do it anyway, and that, you know, I can’t, I don’t know the answer to that. That’s a hypothetical. Maybe it happens, maybe it doesn’t. But a lot of our Republican senators believe, and as one of them described it, at some point, the Democrats may try to steal the car. But we’re not going to hand them the keys. In other words, if all the things they want to do – D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood, packing the Supreme Court, abortion on demand, federalizing elections, if we open the door to allow them to do that, then we’re going to own it. And I think that’s the view of a lot of Senate Republicans. But on the SAVE Act, I mean, you’re right. I strongly support it. I co-sponsored the original version last Congress, and I’ll do whatever I can to pass it if there’s a clear path to doing it. But we did put it on the floor for debate, and we had it on the floor for over a couple weeks. We forced Democrats to take a position on all of those common-sense policies. We’ve had five votes now on the entire SAVE America Act, or pieces of it, including photo ID, including citizenship to register. During the debate, no one’s more consistently in support of the bill than I did. So they’re common-sense policies, widely supported by Republican and Democrat voters. They ought to get an automatic yes from literally every member of this body. But it’s the Democrats who consistently block it. There hasn’t been a single Democrats in the five votes that we’ve had that has voted for it. And so that’s what we ought to be doing, is turning our fire on the Democrats, and you know, given their staunch, unwavering opposition to the bill, I think it should be a message we should carry to voters across the country and further highlight the contrast between Democrats and Republicans on the issue and get away, if we can, from attacking each other.

HH: And I have told the President on this program, Leader Thune, that I support the filibuster, and I don’t believe, actually, that Democrats will break it unless they get an overwhelming majority, because I don’t think, I think they’re like your caucus. There are a lot of people who don’t talk about it much, but they respect the institution enough that they’re not going to break it. Am I right about that?

JT: I think you are, and I don’t know, it was probably highlighted this last week when you saw John Fetterman, who was out there actively supporting getting rid of the filibuster, write an op-ed in the Washington Post defending the filibuster, and saying that he’d completely changed his position on that. And I’ve been approached by Democrats on the floor with the same basic view. But I think that you’re right. It doesn’t get talked a lot about, and there’s pressure on their side, just like there is on ours to get rid of it from some base voters. And you know, anytime you have a president, every president wants to get rid of the Senate filibuster, because they view it as an impediment to getting things done. But it has served as an important check and balance through the years. And if you’re a conservative in this country, it has been, allowed us to stop more really crazy, horrific ideas to expand and grow government and create a lot of really left-leaning, liberal Democrat policy through the years. And that’s the way a lot of Republicans view it, is it’s been…

HH: But good legislation gets through. Example – the Russia sanctions bill this week. That got through with a bipartisan big bulge of support.

JT: Yeah. It did, and I think that’s evidence again that you can, it does work. It can work. We’ve seen a number of examples of that, bipartisan legislation. There’s a number of things, I think, that are still ahead of us on the agenda that we could get done with bipartisan votes, Hugh. But yeah, Russia sanctions, of course, and there’s a huge, as you would expect around here, desire to do this for Lindsey and as a tribute to him, but also because it’s the right things to do for the country. I mean, we’ve really got a chance to do something that helps shift the playing field in Ukraine. But these sanctions target Russian officials, oligarchs, family members, foreign persons, Russian banks, and financial institutions as well as this Russia shadow fleet, which continues to allow Russian oil and gas to fund Putin’s war. So it’s important we get this done, and it was a big bipartisan vote for it yesterday. And we’ve got to finish it now. We’ve got to get it across the finish line. But I think we should hopefully continue to see strong bipartisan support for it, which is an example of how this place can and should work.

HH: Now Leader Thune, I want to turn to the midterms, because we’ve got to hold onto the Senate. And I’m doing everything I can for Senator Collins, who’s the most powerful woman in the United States Congress, probably in Washington. Senator Sullivan in Alaska, where they’re trying trickery up there. Senator Husted in Ohio, Senator Ricketts in Nebraska, more dirty tricks with Ricketts. And then we’ve got challengers Rogers in Michigan, Mike Collins in Georgia, John Sununu or Scott Brown in New Hampshire. What do you make of the midterm outlook right now?

JT: You know, I think given the fact that if you look at any of the polling, and you know, the so-called generic ballot, we’re facing some political headwinds. We’re probably facing, arguably, two, depending on what happens in the Middle East, some economic headwinds. But the truth is we’re as well-positioned as we can possibly can be. You mentioned some of our candidates. We have high-quality candidates in all the right places in all the competitive races around the country. And you know, we’ve got a firewall that we’ve got to keep. I think the Senate is a firewall for the country if the House flips. Hopefully, we can keep them both, but we’ve got to protect the Senate, and that firewall runs through places like you said. It’s Maine, it’s Ohio, it’s Iowa, it’s Alaska. We’ve got an open seat in North Carolina. We’re taking on incumbents in Georgia and New Hampshire and Michigan, and we’ve got great candidates in all those places. But you’ve got to make sure they’re well-resourced, and that we’re out communicating our message and drawing a contrast with the Democrats. I mean, this is where I think, you know, instead of turning our fire on each other, we really ought to be, because we have, there’s a Democrat Party in this country that is so far out of the political mainstream, they are so extreme and so radical in a lot of their ideas. And so we’ve just got to take that case to the American people and draw the contrast between their vision of the future and ours.

HH: Leader, we’ve got two minutes left. I know you’ve got a work period before the August work period back in the states. Will that include the NDAA, because the National Defense Authorization Act has been held up by Democrats. It’s the first time, I’ve been on the air for 27 years, that this has happened, that Democrats have been so obstructionist that they held up the NDAA. Is that going to break? Are they going to change their minds?

JT: It’s crazy, Hugh. I mean, they’re making it all about Iran, but the fact of the matter is this that funding the military is job number one. I mean, if you don’t get that right, the rest is conversation. So we’re going to do everything we can to get that voted on again. If they won’t give us the votes, we did get a bill reported out of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The House passed a Defense authorization bill. We could go to conference with the committee-passed version of that, and then try to get something out of the conference that Democrats will vote for when it comes back to the floor. But it’s incredibly irresponsible on their part. It is, frankly, I mean, inexcusable if you think about what’s at stake for our country for them to hold up the thing that authorizes taking care of our troops, their pay, taking care of the military families, ensuring that we’ve got the right weaponry and technology to keep our country safe and to deter and defeat any threat that’s out there to America’s national security interest. So it’s critically important. You know, the other thing they’re blocking right now, which you, I know, appreciate as well, is FISA, which is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

HH: Oh, we’ve got to get it.

JT: Another important national security thing.

HH: Leader John Thune, always good to talk to you. Thank you for the updates on all of that, and I appreciate it very much. Talk to you again soon.

JT: Talk to you soon. Thank you, Hugh.

HH: Thank you, Leader John Thune.

End of interview.