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John Thune didn’t have much time to celebrate his victory as the next Senate Republican leader.
Soon after he won the race to lead the chamber next year, Donald Trump delivered a pile of challenges with a trio of nominees whose polarizing backgrounds and unorthodox qualifications present a serious test for the incoming Senate chief.
Confirming Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary and Tulsi Gabbard as national intelligence director will require Thune’s 53 GOP senators to stay largely united throughout public hearings that are highly likely to become political knife fights.
And that’s assuming the trio even get the support to clear Senate committees — or that Thune’s members want to proceed with the nominations. Trump floated the idea of approving his nominees during a recess to avoid formal Senate vetting — another huge hurdle for the majority leader-in-waiting.
“John is talented at bringing people together and trying to find a path forward,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, told Semafor. “But to have the Matt Gaetz nomination on the very day that he became chosen as leader was certainly unfortunate timing. And it illustrates the challenges he’s going to face in defending the Senate as an institution.”
The Trump 2.0 era on Capitol Hill is already here, with the president-elect pushing his party’s lawmakers to fall in line regardless of their individual concerns. And the coming Senate confirmation fights over his advisers will be the first act in that drama.
Collins is one of several more centrist Republicans whose votes Trump cannot necessarily count on for more contentious nominees; she made no secret this week of her shock over the Gaetz pick and said she wasn’t sure Kennedy would even get a Senate-confirmed role.
In a brief interview with Semafor, Thune did not editorialize on the challenges that Trump’s cabinet picks might present. He said the Senate will “do the normal thing in vetting and confirmations hearings, etc. And it’s a process. And we’ll adhere to it, but try and expedite it.”
He has a fourth nominee whose confirmation could also prove challenging: Fox News host and veteran Pete Hegseth as Defense secretary, a choice Trump announced while Thune was working to win over his colleagues in a private leadership forum.
Thune’s personal confirmation battle next year will require him to bridge the gaps between more establishment-aligned Republicans like Collins, who are already skeptical about one or more of Trump’s choices, and more MAGA-friendly GOP senators.
The South Dakotan won the leadership battle in part by emphasizing his rebuilt relationship with the incoming president. And there’s a substantial bloc of Senate Republicans who are eager to see Thune do whatever it takes to confirm Trump’s advisers.
“I was struck [Wednesday] by how far he went and saying that ‘there’s no daylight between me and President Trump, we’ll advance his agenda,’” said one Republican senator, noting Thune’s openness to using recess appointments on Trump’s picks.
“If he tries to walk that back,” this senator added, “I think there will be hellfire and brimstone.”
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Most GOP senators vowed this week to thoroughly evaluate all of Trump’s nominees, including rigorous confirmation hearings. At the same time, few of them want to start two years of all-Republican rule in Washington by antagonizing Trump.
So they are praising the selection of their colleague Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state. And many are avoiding any direct comment on Gaetz’s ethics investigation for sexual contact with a minor, Kennedy’s vaccine criticism, or Gabbard’s past friendliness toward Syria’s leader.
“Most people would be less than honest if they said anything other than ‘Matt Gaetz is problematic,’ but he still has been nominated by the president. And so, you do your due diligence,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., a top Thune ally.
But unlike in 2017, when departing Republican leader Mitch McConnell received deference from the Trump team on handling the Senate, Thune faces something of a blank slate.
He’s already directly coordinating with Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance as January approaches.
“There’s a lot of communication between” Thune and Trump, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va, told Semafor. “And the trust is good at this point. John, he can navigate it pretty well.”
Thune’s strength as an operator is rooted in his appeal to both moderate and conservative factions of the Senate GOP. Yet he’s shown a willingness to take votes as whip that are politically tough in Trump’s party; he backed aid to Ukraine and raising the debt ceiling.
Yet Capito also acknowledged that Trump is going to constantly surprise Senate Republicans.
“One thing we’ve learned about President Trump is that predictability is a dangerous thought,” she said.
The View From The right flank
Conservatives and Trump allies in the Senate are watching Thune warily. They don’t want to cut corners on the confirmation process, but they are very explicit that the Senate cannot be seen as an impediment to Trump’s agenda.
“I would think that Republicans would listen to the people. We’re not gonna have another chance,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. “If we think we got the answers [in the Senate], we’re in the wrong spot.”
Burgess’s view
One of the hardest but most essential tasks for congressional leaders in both parties is saying no. Sometimes that means telling their members “no,” and occasionally it can mean telling the president “no.”
Thune’s tenure will be no different.
At the moment, it’s quite clear Trump is seeking to bend the entire GOP to his will — and in the Senate, he’s likely to get approval for the vast majority of his selections before a recess appointment fight is even necessary.
It’s unrealistic to expect Thune to do anything to sink Trump’s nominees; he’s going to follow the feedback he gets from his members on what’s doable and what isn’t.
The Gaetz and Kennedy nominations might not prove doable in the end: There could be enough senators who either come out publicly against them or privately advise Trump to pick someone else.