Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that he gave a reality check to the White House and House Republicans about their continued push to change Senate rules, and warned about the fallout for the majority party if the war in Iran doesn’t end in the near term.
The Republican leader told NOTUS in an exclusive interview on Thursday that he has been forced in recent weeks to remind President Donald Trump and his House colleagues that the 60-vote threshold is not going anywhere despite their constant pleas and barbs.
“Over and over and over again,” Thune said about how often he’s had to deliver that message in recent weeks. “But a bunch of them over there just keep lobbing it back. The president was where he is, and I know that. I just tell him, ‘I’m not telling you. I’m just giving you a dosage of reality. It’s not going to happen. The votes aren’t there.’”
Thune described the topsy-turvy push to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security as a “wild ride” that led to the Senate side unanimously voting Thursday morning to send the DHS funding bill it passed last week back to the House for a second attempt to end the shutdown.
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“There has been an expectation in the House, in other places and for that matter even some in the White House that eventually, we would just nuke the filibuster,” Thune said in his office. “With the House guys who were like, ‘We don’t like this, we don’t like this’ — I’m like, ‘Give me a better option.’”
“In the end, it was the understanding that we would come in back behind with reconciliation, and I don’t know which part of that message maybe wasn’t clear in the House, but in the end it just kind of took its own course, which is unfortunate.”
The leader’s remarks come at the same time Trump is under increasing pressure to explain the endgame for the war in Iran. Wednesday evening, he warned Americans that two-to-three weeks of intense fighting in the Islamic Republic will take place. Trump also said that he expects the U.S.’s military objectives to be achieved “very shortly.”
That timeline remains key for Thune and top Republicans, especially as public support of the war is drowned out vastly by those opposing it. A recent poll shows that Americans oppose the war by nearly a 4-1 margin.
“At some point, when you get down to where the numbers are right now … the only way you have to go is up,” Thune said, adding that things could turn around if the war is not “protracted” and if no further ground troops are deployed. “I think those are all key, key issues, which again, if this is concluded in the foreseeable future — a few weeks like the president suggested — then I think things normalize.”
Thune conceded that if the war drags on and gas prices — which hit $4 per gallon this week — remain high, that could drag down Republicans ahead of the November midterms.
“I think that’s the issue. People are pocketbook voters, and even those who are inclined to say this makes sense from a national security standpoint. So yeah, it has real implications and ramifications, and I think an extended presence there creates that,” Thune said.
Oil prices spiked north of $100 per barrel once again after the president’s Wednesday address, with that figure eclipsing $113 on Thursday morning. Trump did not lay out a concrete plan toward a potential reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranians have blockaded, leading to soaring energy prices.
Thune also indicated that he does not expect supplemental Iran funding to be included in the coming reconciliation bill. Republican leaders are trying to limit it to DHS funding only, despite past chatter that it could include Iran war funding or parts of the SAVE America Act, a bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, which the president has labeled a top priority.
Iran war funds, however, could be part of a third reconciliation bill. Thune left the door open to that possibility.
Trump has indicated that he expects Republicans to move swiftly on the DHS reconciliation bill and is hopeful to sign it into law by June 1, which the Republican leader believes is realistic despite a potentially heavy lift, particularly in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson has a one-vote margin to advance partisan legislation.
“My job is leading and managing the Senate,” Thune said. “As I’ve said many times before, I’ve never been in the business of telling the House how to conduct its work. I’ll leave that to them.”
It’s unclear when the House will act on the Senate’s DHS bill.
Thune said the DHS plan, which Johnson trashed only to come around days later, came together after a final counteroffer from Democrats led him to believe once and for all that a deal that included ICE funding was “going nowhere fast.” Multiple Republicans, including Sen. Katie Britt, had attempted to back-channel with rank-and-file Democrats, only to have them defer to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
That led them to the proposal that emerged, which he said happened alongside Trump’s decision to pay Transportation Security Administration workers unilaterally. He declined, however, to say whether Trump was in agreement with the chamber’s two-pronged plan.
“I’m not going to speak for him. He knew what we were doing,” Thune said. “[The White House was] ready and his staff was ready.”
When asked if he felt like he’d been thrown under the bus by Trump and Johnson, he demurred.
“I don’t know about that. I’m usually under the bus, it seems like, with a lot of my House colleagues anyway,” he quipped. “There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and that the House is going to hate on the Senate.”
The DHS shutdown also brought another layer of scrutiny for some in the Senate Republican conference as they, along with House members, have been photographed by TMZ, a celebrity tabloid news outlet, vacationing. The most notable was Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was photographed at Disney World.
Thune defended his colleagues largely, noting that recess was laid out months in advance and that it was spring break time for many children of lawmakers. He did caution, though, that it’s a “new era” and that members need to be mindful in the future.
“I never thought that showbiz would be interested in politics because it’s just such a boring enterprise,” said Thune, who went to college in Los Angeles. “But, evidently, there’s enough interest in it now that they can follow people through airports and whatnot. It’s just something people have to be aware of and plan accordingly.”
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