The once-and-future president tried to oust Thune from the Senate in 2022. Thune won another term. He is now the Senate Majority Leader.
President Donald Trump, accompanied by Sen. John Thune, pauses to speak to the cameras after lunch with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2018.
(Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)
When Donald Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, some of the most visible and consistent objections came from South Dakota’s top senator, John Thune. That was notable because Thune was serving as the majority in the Republican-controlled Senate at the time. That’s even more notable now that Thune was elected Senate Majority Leader for Trump’s second term as president on Wednesday.
While Thune now says it has evolved labor relations with the incoming president, and suggests the Senate GOP is “united” behind the new administration’s agenda, he has a very long history of making clear his distaste for Trump’s personal and political excesses — and being the target of his colleague’s ire – Republican.
The sharpest clashes between Trump and Thune have come over issues that are already resurfacing as the new majority leader, an institutionalist who values the Senate’s ability to check the executive branch, will have to deal with Trump’s determined efforts to undermine the authority of the chamber, which must approve his Cabinet picks and candidacy of judges.
After the 2020 presidential election, Thune quickly rejected Trump’s attempts to get congressional Republicans to support an effort to overturn the results of the election, in which Trump was decisively defeated. At the time, Thune announced, “All the states have done everything they were supposed to do under the law.” As Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to block Congress from approving the Electoral College’s decision, Thune was furious. stated “We had a job to do and a thug like that wasn’t going to stop us from doing the people’s job.”
For now 147 Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives voted to accept objections to the results of the 2020 election in several states, Thune voted with Democrats and a smaller number of Republicans to confirm the general results. During and after the fight, reminded Sioux Falls, South Dakota Argus is the leader“Tune too directly condemned Trump for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election and his role in the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He called his involvement and that of the rioters “unforgivable.” (However, like his former boss, then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Thune did not join the brave Republicans who voted in February 2021 to impeach Trump on felonies and misdemeanors.)
It wasn’t the first time Thune called out Trump. Thune was also one of Trump’s first critics after the Hollywood Access tape resurfaced in 2005 in which the New York businessman made crude and sexual comments about women, according to Argus is the leader. “News of the tape prompted Thune to say Trump should drop the Republican nomination in his first presidential race.”
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But it was always Thune’s refusal to agree with Trump’s challenge to the results of the 2020 presidential election that angered the one-time president-to-be. In December 2020, Thune said Trump’s efforts to force the Senate to reject the results of the Electoral College “fall like a shot dog“In the Senate, Trump was furious. “RINO John Thune, ‘Mitch’s boy,’ should just let it play out. South Dakota does not like weakness,” he said declared in December 2020 “He will be the primary in 2022, his political career is over!!!”
Trump, as usual, held his grudge. For the New Year 2021. he announced“I hope to see the great governor of South Dakota, Christy Noah, run against a RINO @SenJohnThunein the upcoming 2022 primary election. She would do a fantastic job in the US Senate, but if not for Christie, others are already lining up. South Dakota wants strong leadership, now!”
Noem, now Trump’s pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, didn’t take up the challenge. In 2022, Thune won the Republican primary with 72 percent of the vote before winning re-election in November of that year by 43 points in the predominantly Republican state.
Thune was slow to make peace with Trump when it became clear that the president was going to retain power over the Republican Party. While many Republican senators have endorsed Trump’s third presidential bid before the caucuses and primaries begin in 2024, Thune defiantly refused to do so —arguing that “Obviously, revisiting the 2020 election is not a winning strategy.”
Eventually, Thune supported former South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s primary challenger, going so far as to appear at Scott’s May 2023 rally. “Thune lives up to his hopes of turning the GOP away from Trump and presenting a more forward-looking vision for the party,” reported Politics.
Only when it became clear that Trump had the support he needed to claim the GOP nomination did Thune finally jump in, albeit with obvious misgivings about a candidate who he said was “always worried“about. Those concerns resurfaced in August when, during a farm policy debate in South Dakota, Thune said Trump’s proposed tariffs were “a recipe for increased inflation.”
Thune must now determine how to preserve his constitutionally conservative principles while dealing with Trump’s demands for destructive economic and political policies and pressure from the president-elect to endorse candidates who may illegally promote those policies. That pressure includes demanding that Trump be allowed to walk the Senate floor break dates— an approach that, as the new majority leader said, can only be avoided if cooperation with the Democrats continues. It’s just one of many pressure points that will test Thune’s commitment to upholding the Senate’s powers as a check and balance on executive abuse. If he declines, he won’t be the first Republican to do so. If he stands his ground, at least minimally, it’s a safe bet that Trump will soon be pushing the South Dakota senator’s primary challenge again.
We cannot retreat
We now face a second Trump presidency.
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Armed with 160 years of courageous independent journalism, our mandate remains the same today as it was when the Abolitionists were founded Nation— to defend the principles of democracy and freedom, to serve as a beacon in the darkest days of resistance, and to see and fight for a bright future.
The day is dark, the forces are building tenaciously, but it’s too late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is just the time when artists go to work. No time for despair, no room for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we make language. This is how civilizations heal.”
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Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, Nation
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