John Thune finally found a use for the SAVE America Act. Not passing it. Running on it.
“How about we make it about them?” Thune told reporters Monday, before beclowning himself by pretending he is the only one who “can count to 50.”
“How about we make it about them!” Thune said, regarding Democrats.
“Seems to me I’m the only one who can count to 50. We don’t have the votes,” he added. “Let’s make this an issue in the campaign. How about we go out and turn our fire on Democrats and make it about them opposing the SAVE Act.”
? JUST IN: Leader John Thune says Republicans should turn their SAVE America Act fire off of him and onto Democrats, and use it as a midterm issue against the left
"How about we make it about them!"
"Seems to me I'm the only one who can count to 50. We don't have the votes."… pic.twitter.com/LOQJWwd9Vs
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 4, 2026
How ’bout you do your job as a leader and twist arms, threaten to take away chairmanships and campaign financing? Maybe try and make a deal with some ‘no’ votes? You know, John, become a leader.
The Senate Majority Leader has 53 Republican seats. He cannot find 50 votes. His solution is to weaponize his own failure as a campaign strategy.
This is a man who has fundamentally misunderstood his job.
The SAVE America Act requires proof of citizenship to register and vote. Eighty-three percent of Americans support it. Seventy-two percent of Democrats support it. New Jersey just admitted 6,600 noncitizens were on its voter rolls with nearly 400 who voted. Virginia found 6,531 more. A British national pleaded guilty in Texas last week to voting in five American elections over twelve years. The Trump administration’s declassified intelligence identified 270,000 noncitizen registrations across just four cooperating states. The evidence isn’t theoretical anymore. It’s documented, prosecuted, and multiplying.
And Thune’s answer is to make it a campaign issue. What a clown.
Let’s be clear about what “make it a campaign issue” actually means in practice. It means: we had the evidence, we had the majority, we had the public support, we had the urgency, we had a president who personally came to Capitol Hill to pressure us — and we chose the filibuster over election security. Then we went on television to say we couldn’t find 50 votes in a 53-seat majority and told voters to be angry at Democrats instead.
Democrats will kill the filibuster the moment they take back power. They put it in a signed resolution. Sen. Chris Murphy confirmed it on a podcast. This is not speculation. The filibuster that Thune is protecting will be gone before his next term ends if Republicans lose the Senate in November. He is preserving a procedural rule specifically to avoid a difficult vote — a rule his opponents have already promised to eliminate.
The campaign issue argument is also the wrong read of the political moment. Running on “we wanted to do it but couldn’t” doesn’t fire up a base. It demoralizes one. Voters who believe the SAVE America Act is urgent — and the polling says an overwhelming majority do — are not going to be energized by a campaign commercial about a bill that died in Thune’s Senate. They’re going to stay home.
Darline Graham, in her first week as a senator replacing her late brother Lindsey, said she’d vote to end the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act if that’s what it takes. She’s been in office eight days. She understands the moment better than the man who has run the Senate for eight months. So does President Trump, who even went to Capitol Hill to urge the GOP majorities to get this done.
Making it about them is not a strategy. It’s an admission of defeat dressed up as a plan.
Do the job, Senator. While you still can.
