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John Thune Went to the Senate Floor to Defend Himself Against Complaints of Inaction — and Got Absolutely Buried

Updated: POLITICS

John Thune is frustrated. He wants you to know that.

The Senate Majority Leader went to the chamber floor Wednesday to deliver a speech about all the things he’s working on and how unfair it is that the White House and base Republicans keep pointing out that he’s failing at his job.

The replies were merciless. They deserved to be.

Here’s the actual legislative picture that Thune’s speech couldn’t change. Speaker Mike Johnson — working with a functionally one-vote House majority, constant procedural insurgencies from his own members, and a calendar that leaves no margin for error — has passed appropriations bills, a stock trading ban, NDAA reauthorization, and a continuing resolution that averts a government shutdown on September 30 with the SAVE America Act attached. He did all of this with the smallest House majority in American history.

Thune’s response to Johnson’s spending bill was to announce he’s working with Democrats on a separate stopgap — the same move that turned the DHS funding fight into a 75-day humiliation. Democrats played him then. They will play him again. They always do, because Thune keeps bringing a handshake to a knife fight and then acting surprised when he gets cut.

When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt publicly called out the Senate’s incompetence at the briefing podium, Thune’s response was to suggest — petulantly, on the Senate floor — that maybe she should come work the phones herself if she’s so smart. That’s the Senate Majority Leader of the United States taking shots at the White House press secretary because she accurately described his failures to the country.

The base Republican response was not sympathetic. “No one is impressed with you reading the speech provided by your handlers with your hands in your pockets. Pass the SAVE America Act.” That was a representative sample. The replies got considerably more colorful from there.

The anonymous operative quote that circulated alongside the speech coverage was equally revealing: Trump came to the Capitol personally to pressure Senate Republicans on SAVE and left empty-handed. This operative — apparently trying to lower expectations — framed this as proof that the fight is unwinnable. What it actually proves is that John Thune cannot control his own caucus on the signature legislative priority of the president his party elected.

Trump personally showed up. Thune couldn’t deliver. And now he’s giving floor speeches about South Dakota values while the clock runs out on the most important election security legislation in a generation.

The Republican voters who sent this majority to Washington didn’t do it so John Thune could negotiate government funding deals with Chuck Schumer and deliver speeches about his feelings when people criticize him for it.

They did it to pass the SAVE America Act. To secure American elections. To do the things that actually matter.

The speech was an embarrassment. The replies captured exactly why.

Do your job, Senator. The floor speeches can wait.