Senate Majority Leader John Thune recently sat down for an interview with Fox News host Martha MacCallum to discuss the possibility of President Donald Trump endorsing incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) for his seat against his primary challenger, Attorney General Ken Paxton. Following the interview, conservatives pointed out that Thune allegedly does not have time to debate the election integrity bill known as the SAVE Act, but seemingly has time to campaign for Cornyn.
In a clip of the interview that is now going viral, Thune told MacCallum that he had spoken with President Trump about the Senate race in Texas and is hopeful that the president will ultimately choose to back Cornyn. “I’ve spoken with the president already today about Texas, and I’m certainly hopeful, I think, as probably you know, Martha, and I made no secret of the fact that I hope the president will endorse John Cornyn,” Thune said.
“He has been an incredibly effective senator for the state of Texas, a strong conservative voice here in the United States Senate, and represents by far our very best hope of making sure that South Texas stays red in November in that Senate election,” the Senate Majority Leader continued.
Thune then pointed out that the president is a capable leader who can make up his own mind when it comes to choosing who to endorse. “And so we’ll see. Ultimately, the President, you know, he makes his own decisions, but I’ve certainly weighed in many a time, many times, I should say, in support of Senator Cornyn and I believe he is not only going to win the primary, but the general election,” Thune added.
MacCallum then stated she was watching Matt Whitlock, who used to be part of the Republican Senate Committee, and stated that he believes President Trump will endorse Cornyn, and if there is an announcement coming soon that Trump would back Cornyn in the primary. She said, “Yeah, I was just watching Matt Whitlock, who used to do the Republican Senate Committee. He said he believes that an endorsement for Cornyn is coming from the President. You said you just spoke with him. Is it coming shortly that endorsement from the President?”
Thune played coy by refusing to reveal the nature of his conversations with President Trump or reveal any information he may have about who he’s going to endorse in the race, but he did say that Trump is paying close attention to the race. He said, “Well, I’m not going to characterize that conversations I’ve had with the President, but I think it’s fair to say that he’s paying a lot of attention, and he knows full well, Martha, how important it is that we hold Texas in the Republican column, Republican hands.”
The one thing Thune did reveal is that the endorsement from the president would be coming soon, though he refused to confirm or deny that Trump would be backing Cornyn, though he hopes that is the case. “And so I expect you’ll be hearing from him before too long, and I’m not certainly going to get ahead of that, but I’m just very hopeful that the endorsement will be for John Cornyn.”
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Commenters on the video took the Senate Majority Leader to task for not spending his time on becoming familiar with the SAVE Act and helping it to move forward in order to protect U.S. elections from getting hijacked by illegal immigrant voters. One user wrote, “Thune, is this the game: Delay delay delay, delay, then pass the SAVE act in August or September? Your Dem and Rino buddies can then claim it’s too burdensome administratively and too late to implement prior to the midterms. Then you can claim that you got the bill passed! What a deal! Hooray for John Thune! Thune wins. RINOs win. Dems win. Cheaters win. America loses.”
Another replied, “Bingo! That’s the lying Senate Leader of the Republican majority! Remember he stated there was not enough time to pass THE SAVE AMERICA ACT with the talking filibuster but he’s got time to go on Fox News for his RINO buddy, and time to take another vacation, and time to throw his support behind a Democrat housing bill. Wake the f**k up Republicans, John Thune has GOT to go!! Remove him period dead stop!!
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video