Thune Named New Senator Majority Leader

This week, both the House and Senate elected the new leaders for the upcoming session of Congress.

Speaker Johnson (R-LA) was re-elected in the House, but Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) was picked as the leader of the GOP in the Senate, which shocked everyone.

The Players

Three Senators—Rick Scott (R-FL), John Cornyn (R-TX), and John Thune—were up for the position.

Surprisingly, Cornyn had the endorsement of Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), a diehard MAGA member. I thought Hawley would definitely go for Scott.

Scott had the backing of MAGA and presumably Trump, but Trump did not publicly endorse the position. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was among those who spoke up for Scott.

Thune is a McConnell loyalist, and as such, all of the establishment senators supported him.

Not How I Thought

When the first round of voting took place, Scott was the lowest man on the totem poll, and he was removed from the race.

That left Thune and Cornyn, and Thune won out, being elected the new Senate Leader for the GOP.

I was stunned, to say the least, but rumors were floating around that behind closed doors, Thune is who Trump wanted as his guy in the Senate.

Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) had suggested to his fellow Senators that Thune was Trump’s guy, but he also confirmed that Trump would not be making a public endorsement. Daines’ office, however, denied the report after the fact.

His office stated, "This anonymously sourced story is false. Sen. Daines told his colleagues that President Trump likes Sen. Thune, but he never said he endorsed him. If President Trump endorsed in that race everybody would have known about it."

Get to Work

The fact that Trump did not voice an objection to the election of Thune tells me that the original reporting was probably correct because as we all know, Trump has never had a problem calling someone out.

To his credit, Thune, thus far, has stated that he is fully behind Trump’s agenda. After being elected, Thune stated, “We will make sure that the president and his team have the tools and support that they need to enforce border security laws and to remove the violent criminals who are wreaking havoc in every one of our states.”

I plan on holding him accountable for that statement because as everyone reading this knows, nobody is safe from my pen if they let down We the People. We have the House, we have the Senate, and we have the White House, so the time for excuses is now officially over. We want results and we want to see our agenda put in motion right away.