Republicans elected a reincarnation of retiring GOP Senate chief Mitch McConnell to lead the upper chamber on Wednesday following former President Donald Trump’s overwhelming win last week.
Sen. John Thune of South Dakota was promoted from Republican Senate whip to majority leader on the second secret ballot with 29 votes in a contest against Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who received 24. The two lawmakers edged out a challenge from Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who only captured three more votes for his candidacy for leader compared to his previous challenge to McConnell in 2022. Scott had run two years ago after McConnell funneled scarce campaign resources to win safe seats in the midterms while competitive candidates in key states were stripped of funding over their opposition to the incumbent Senate chief.
“This Republican team is united behind President Trump’s agenda, and our work starts today,” Thune said.
The South Dakota Republican, however, is effectively Mitch McConnell-lite, having acted as a top McConnell deputy in Senate leadership by championing unlimited funding to Ukraine and displaying antagonism toward bold activism from effective colleagues. In May, Thune was among several GOP senators who embraced one of the Democrats’ latest hoaxes against the Supreme Court when The New York Times painted Justice Samuel Alito as an extremist for supposedly flying an American flag in distress.
“I don’t know how you explain that,” Thune said of the fabricated flag controversy wherein Alito’s wife flew a flag upside down at the couple’s residence.
Thune had also previously peddled leftist narratives surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, including the myth that a U.S. Capitol Police officer had been bludgeoned to death, an assertion Thune failed to correct even when an independent medical examiner determined the officer died of natural causes.
Two days before the Senate Republican conference met to elect a new leader, journalist Julie Kelly highlighted Thune’s record of promoting the Biden Justice Department’s political prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants.
“As recently as this year,” Kelly reported, “Thune and Cornyn — neither of whom reached out to me to discuss J6 persecution — DEFENDED Merrick Garland and Matthew Graves[‘] ruthless pursuit of J6ers.”
“We got a justice system and they’re working through it,” Thune had told reporters in January. In June, the Supreme Court concurred in part with Kelly’s conclusion that the DOJ engaged in overreach in Jan. 6 cases when the high court ruled that federal prosecutors could not charge defendants with felonies that carried decades of additional jail time under the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Thune was also one of the first prominent Republicans to demand Trump step down from the GOP ticket in 2016 immediately following the publication of the infamous Access Hollywood tape.
“Donald Trump should withdraw and Mike Pence should be our nominee effective immediately,” Thune wrote on Twitter the next day.
The Republican senator had previously refused to attend Trump’s nominating convention that summer and used the tape from Access Hollywood as an excuse to call for Trump to withdraw from the race that fall.