(CNN) — House Speaker Mike Johnson sometimes can’t get President Trump off the phone. The calls can come in the middle of the day — or the dead of night — or even after hourslong meetings at the White House, the Louisiana Republican often tells associates.
But across the Capitol, the same can’t be said for the other top GOP leader: Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
It can be days, if not weeks, that Thune doesn’t hear from the president. Thune instead mostly learns about Trump’s latest grenade roiling the GOP agenda or the broadsides directed at the Senate majority leader himself from Truth Social and the media.
During the latest high-stakes stretch in the Senate, with Trump’s own Cabinet nominee in trouble, the president’s election-year agenda teetering and a huge Iran funding bill in doubt, Thune told CNN he hadn’t spoken to the president in nearly two weeks. The split between the two has only widened since Trump moved to take out fellow Republican, Sen. John Cornyn, in his primary in May, and as the president has loudly insisted that the Senate nuke the filibuster — a demand the GOP leader has repeatedly rejected.
“With me, it’s more on an as-needed basis,” Thune told CNN when asked about his conversations with the president as of late.
Now, the increasingly apparent dissonance between the two men is fueling anxiety for many of Thune’s fellow Republicans in Congress, who are defending fragile majorities that are both in play this November.
While the two have never been personally close, with the mild-mannered Thune far different in style than the mercurial and combative president, they were in much more frequent communication at the start of Trump’s second term, according to senators and people who know both. Trump would frequently praise Thune’s leadership as the Senate GOP leader ushered through his agenda and often bit his tongue when he disagreed with the president, whether it was about an incendiary social media post or a policy like sweeping tariffs that hurt his constituents in South Dakota.
Yet in their private talks, Thune uses a very direct approach with Trump, bluntly explaining what can and cannot be accomplished in the Senate, GOP sources say, far different than other Republicans who tend to follow the president’s orders, no matter how implausible.
Tensions have grown in recent weeks, as Trump has publicly taken shots at Thune’s stewardship of the chamber. Trump riled up MAGA Republicans to direct their ire at the GOP leader to pass the president’s “SAVE America Act” — even though the Senate has already rejected the voting restrictions bill.
And Trump has consistently blindsided Thune, whether it was pulling the plug on a signing ceremony for a housing bill that Republicans were eager to champion in an election year dominated by affordability concerns or blowing up efforts to renew key surveillance powers. Trump temporarily sidelined his own nominee for director of national intelligence and even threw a wrench into plans for the Senate to quickly approve tens of billions for immigration enforcement by announcing a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, an issue that still complicates the GOP agenda.
The result has been a circular firing squad that has persisted for months, with roughly a dozen MAGA-aligned Republicans siding squarely with Trump, most other Senate Republicans in Thune’s corner, and many perplexed that the infighting is making a difficult midterm election environment even more challenging.
“I would say we’re all longing for a relationship with the White House where we work more in harmony,” said Sen. John Curtis, a Utah Republican.
“The infighting is not really productive,” said GOP Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia, making clear that he supports the president’s agenda, but acknowledging the limits of a narrowly divided Senate. “There’s no point in going round and round and round.”
And if the leaders can’t get on the same page, Justice warned: “If you don’t watch out, you’re gonna make things much, much, much worse because we’re gonna lose seats and that will make it worse for the president.”
The gulf is only set to widen with the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, an ally and confidant of both men, according to GOP senators. Graham, a golf partner of Trump’s and a very close friend of Thune’s, was a “linchpin” between the two, one of the senators said.
“We need to be talking up the wins, talking about how crazy Democrats are, and instead we are knifing each other,” the senator said.
Trump-Thune spat comes to a head
The relationship between the two men is poised to hit an inflection point as the Senate stares down a five-week recess beginning at this week’s end. Trump has demanded that his “SAVE America Act” pass before senators leave. But even setting up a certain-to-be-doomed vote would eat up precious floor time as the chamber scrambles to finish other big-ticket items, such as Graham’s Russia sanctions bill and a stopgap funding measure to keep the government open until December.
Complicating matters the most: Trump’s demand to move his agenda through the unwieldy budget process, a move that would allow him to advance a larger package of billions for the Iran war and election restrictions along straight party lines. Yet there remains sharp disagreement among Senate Republicans on what the proposal should look like, meaning it also lacks 50 votes to pass the Senate, according to Thune.
Thune’s chief priority this week is keeping the government open past September 30. But Trump and his inner circle are far more intent to pass the rest of his agenda using that budget maneuver – despite the objections of many in their own party.
Senior White House officials, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and budget director Russ Vought, have been pressing senators to advance a budget resolution this week. But in a closed-door lunch with Vought last week, several GOP senators pushed back at the White House’s demands, according to sources in the room.
Many Republicans side with Thune, especially since the cumbersome process would require a marathon series of votes – known on Capitol Hill as a “vote-a-rama” – on politically charged issues that vulnerable senators are eager to avoid.
“I don’t believe that it is realistically possible to do it,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican, when asked about voting on the budget resolution. “I’m not sure that a late-night vote-a-rama with a lot of political hot buttons is what a lot of members who are up this year are really looking forward to. So, I question the political wisdom as well.”
Trump’s frustration with Thune and his GOP leadership team are shared by the MAGA wing in Congress, which is planning to force a vote this week that would prevent the Senate from adjourning for the summer. Roughly a dozen Republicans support it, according to one person briefed on the discussions.
Trump-aligned senators, like Senate Budget Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, warn Thune that it would be an “enormous mistake” to adjourn without acting on Trump’s demand to move his agenda through the budget process.
“Our supporters wouldn’t take kindly to it,” Johnson told CNN.
But most senators recognize that canceling the August recess wouldn’t get more of Trump’s agenda done, since Republicans don’t have the votes to accomplish what the president wants.
‘He doesn’t vote in our elections’
Many of Thune’s allies believe Trump is setting him up to be the fall guy if Democrats rout in the midterms and flip the Senate.
Asked by CNN on Thursday whether he thinks Trump is trying to make him a scapegoat, Thune simply shrugged his shoulders: “I don’t know.”
But it was just a day earlier when Trump pointedly refused to give Thune a vote of confidence when asked whether he’s still the man for the job.
“Well, we’re going to find out and I’ll let you know,” the president said.
Thune responded with his own retort: “He doesn’t vote in our elections.”
The White House declined to comment on Trump’s relationship with Thune, instead referring back to the president’s prior critical comments about the Senate GOP leader.
GOP senators say there’s another big reason for the fallout. Thune is forced to express the views of many in his conference who disagree with the president but are afraid to speak out over fears of reprisal. Those issues include Trump’s demands to eliminate Senate traditions and rules that give power to the minority party, such as the filibuster and the so-called blue slips to grant it a say on certain lower court nominees and US attorney picks.
Thune, backed by many Senate Republicans, has told the president they won’t do it — particularly over the filibuster, a tool they say they’ll need one day in the Senate minority to block Democratic bills.
“It’s just a fact, we’re not going to nuke the filibuster,” Thune said of the stall tactic that requires 60 votes to overcome.
And Trump’s decision to go after two Senate Republicans exacerbated tensions, especially since Cornyn’s Texas seat now is at risk of flipping with Trump’s controversial pick of Ken Paxton as the nominee.
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma chalked up Trump’s frustrations to his fast-paced nature as a long-time business executive.
“He’s not content with anything. ‘I can make a better golf club, I can make a better hotel,’” Lankford said. “He’s always pushing.”
But asked if it’s productive for the two party leaders to be in disagreement, Lankford said: “Thune and the president can work out the differences on that. The hard part is, the president wants to be able to move fast like an executive can move. But we’re a legislative branch, we don’t move that fast.”
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