Trump-Thune Rift Deepens as Senators Bristle Over Demands

Republican unease with President Trump isn't exactly a secret, but it now has a focal point: Senate GOP leader John Thune. Sources tell Punchbowl News that in a closed-door lunch meeting Wednesday, Sen. John Kennedy complained that Trump is "taking shots" at Thune—and no one rose to defend the president. Thune himself kept quiet in the room and later offered only a dry "good question" when asked what drove Trump's latest Truth Social broadside, which upended the Senate's schedule and derailed a planned confirmation hearing on Trump's own pick for director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton.

Trump has long pressed Republicans to scrap filibuster rules and other Senate traditions he sees as obstacles, and Thune has been the one delivering bad news by telling him that the votes aren't there. Sen. John Cornyn says Thune is simply telling Trump the truth. "The problem is the president doesn't like hearing that when it frustrates what he wants to do," he says. GOP senators say Trump recently started sounding out colleagues about Thune's leadership, though there's no active move to oust him and Trump hasn't publicly criticized the majority leader.

• Thune is well-liked by his colleagues and a move to push him out could trigger a GOP revolt, the Wall Street Journal reports. "Who doesn't like John Thune?" Kennedy says, per Punchbowl News. "If you don't like John Thune, you don't like golden retrievers."

• The clash comes as Trump-backed challengers have knocked off two GOP incumbents, including Cornyn, and as internal rifts flare over election legislation. According to Punchbowl News' sources, there was a "pile-on" during Wednesday's meeting as senators accused Sen. Mike Lee of giving Trump false hope that the Senate could pass the Save America Act.
• The sources say Trump appears to be trying to inflict "maximum chaos" on the Senate GOP conference in the hope it will lead to them scrapping the filibuster, but senators aren't bending. As Sen. Thom Tillis put it, at some point, senators have to "return ourselves to being a board of directors versus like a manufacturing facility that just creates whatever product the White House wants."