‘Trump likes winners’: How John Thune manages the Senate and Donald Trump

(CNN) — Shortly after Donald Trump blindsided senators and endorsed the House’s plan to advance the president’s agenda last week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune convened his leadership team to navigate next steps.

Leadership needed to decide fast: would they plow ahead with their plan to advance their own Senate budget knowing it wasn’t the president’s first choice or would they sit back and wait for the House to try and muscle through their version knowing there was a chance it would fail and time would be wasted?

Thune weighed in at the top. It was his preference, senators in the room said, to stay the course, hold the vote and endure an overnight voting marathon to get there even if the House ultimately shelved their plan. But the South Dakota Republican wanted his leadership team to weigh in before he made his final call.

They agreed. There was no turning back.

“He just stiffened his resolve and his opinion with no uncertainty, and I think that is the real strength that he has,” GOP conference chair Shelley Moore Capito told CNN of Thune’s process.

The incident offers a small glimpse into how the newly minted Senate leader is navigating an unpredictable president he hasn’t always seen eye to eye with while balancing a majority that has more room for error than in the House but is far from guaranteed to vote in lockstep in the weeks and months ahead.

It’s only been seven weeks, but Thune has managed to keep his conference united enough to confirm every single one of Trump’s nominees that has made it out of committee. It has also been the fastest pace for Cabinet confirmations since 2001.

In interviews with more than two dozen GOP senators and aides, most acknowledge that Thune’s job will become more challenging in the months ahead. The Senate will need to pass a spending bill with Democrats by March 14, and the GOP will likely need to negotiate with Democrats in the chamber again to raise the debt ceiling, something that Democrats are already signaling they will extract a high price for.

“I mean, it’s a great test for any leader,” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said.

In his own ranks, Thune has already had to contend with some close calls on Trump’s most controversial nominees, including Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary, who earned three GOP “no” votes.

Next up, Thune will have to find a way to square his members’ vision of tax cuts with whatever the House can pass in their historically slim majority. And that doesn’t begin to account for ensuring that Trump is satisfied with the end result and doesn’t lash out against Thune or his members.

“Things are going to get choppier now,” Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley predicted.

But members who meet with Thune regularly in Republican lunches, one on one and in leadership meetings paint a picture of a leader that they are confident is up to the task. Many describe Thune as affable and approachable with a midwestern sensibility and sense of humility that other senators – including conservative hardliners that were once a thorn in the side of former GOP leader Mitch McConnell – find refreshing and effective.

“He’s been far more consultative and collaborative than we’ve grown accustomed to,” one GOP senator said. “I think he understands that he was elected to help empower some of his members. He also understands that he campaigned on that platform and offered those reassurances to members, and he has been following through.”

Although senators are reluctant to make outright comparisons to McConnell, who many revere as the premiere tactician of the Senate, many observed Thune has been more free flowing with information in private meetings, updating senators on the state of negotiations as they happen even when an outcome remains uncertain.

“I’m not going to compare him to McConnell. They’re two different human beings,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said. “I think the new leader is doing really well. He’s very even tempered. He’s a good listener. He’s collaborative.”

‘Trump likes winners’

As Thune campaigned to be GOP leader over the summer and into the fall, hitting the campaign trail for Senate Republicans and crisscrossing the country fundraising for the party, detractors raised questions about whether he would be able to mend his relationship with Trump enough to work with the president if he were elected to a second term.

The tension between Trump and the South Dakota Republican hit a crescendo after the 2020 election when Thune didn’t back the effort to try and overturn the election results in Congress, saying the move would “go down like a shot dog.” Trump threatened to back a primary challenger against Thune, but it didn’t materialize and he won his reelection handily in 2022.

As Trump re-emerged on the campaign trail, Thune waited to endorse him until February 2024 after initially throwing his support behind his friend Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. Thune raised questions about Trump’s viability as a general election candidate, warning at the time, “general elections are won in the middle of the electorate,” and making clear that not performing well at the top of the ticket could have down-ballot repercussions that could cost the Senate the majority.

But Trump and Thune have found a path to a productive working relationship, an evolution that began last March when Thune traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the now president. Trump also decided to stay out of the race for GOP leader despite some pressure within his orbit to get involved. Even Thursday, as Thune proceeded with the vote on the Senate budget, Trump applauded his work on Truth Social, writing, “Thank you to Majority Leader John Thune and the Republican Senate for working so hard on funding the Trump-Border Agenda.”

“Trump likes winners and John is a winner,” Sen. Mike Rounds, a fellow South Dakotan, said of the evolution of their relationship. “Trump sees that John has the expertise to manage the Senate.”

Sen. Mike Lee, a close Trump ally, said he’s been with Thune and Trump on several occasions over the last several months and has observed a clear rapport. The Utah Republican said Trump makes it apparent both publicly and privately to other members that he believes Thune is capable of carrying out his agenda, which has enabled them to put some past differences aside.

“Trump likes John Thune and while they’ve had these disagreements, he likes how good he is at this,” said North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer.

But that doesn’t assure the honeymoon will last forever. Thune has and will continue to have to navigate how far to push back on some of Trump’s most controversial decisions. Some of those have come fast and furious in the early days of the president’s second term — from Trump’s choice to pardon convicted January 6, 2021, rioters to his threats to unleash a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico, which could have massive ramifications for Thune’s home state of South Dakota, where the economy relies heavily on exporting crops and manufacturing goods abroad.

On the January 6 pardons, Thune mostly sidestepped reporters’ direct questions about whether he backed the move even as some in his party warned the president had made a mistake.

“We’re looking at the future, not the past,” Thune told reporters in January.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who ran against Thune for leader, said managing the expectations of the executive branch as a Senate leader is always baked into the challenges of the job, but he acknowledged that Trump is an extra source of heartburn.

A shift in the Senate

Thune has so far stayed on Trump’s good side by, in part, running an exacting schedule on the Senate floor, forcing the body to occasionally work a five-day workweek to shield his conference from conservative attacks they were not moving swiftly enough to confirm Trump’s Cabinet. He’s also tried to manage the floor and reduce how long it takes for senators to vote, a trivial thing outside of the Capitol dome but something multiple GOP senators remarked has been a significant improvement over recent years.

“I think Senator McConnell was in that job for so long and did it so well that anybody who came along after him would have a challenge just by comparison, but of course the challenges of dealing with an unconventional president presents additional issues,” Cornyn said, adding he saw Thune as an effective leader who had managed the nominations process at an impressive clip. “You never know how the relationship is going to evolve depending on the issues. I would always expect that, at some point, there will be a difference of opinion between the Senate and (the president).”

When it comes to members’ priorities, senators say Thune has rewarded those who get bills to the floor by allowing them to play a key role in managing the floor process. A former high school basketball player, Thune often reminds colleagues that it pays off to “always make the extra pass,” a lesson he credits to his dad.

Thune’s insistence that members be empowered has cut both ways though.

On nominations, Thune has carefully orchestrated a process devoid of arm twisting or cohesion, which means members have sometimes voted against Trump’s wishes and sometimes been left to defend their votes and rationale to the White House themselves. Thune, who has stayed in close contact with the White House, made clear when Trump nominated Matt Gaetz for attorney general that the votes were not materializing after Gaetz had a series of one-on-one meetings. On other nominees, Thune has tried to connect with members early, often trying to get them information to fill in gaps if they are on the fence and then leaving them room to decide. But Thune has also made clear he won’t shield members from taking their concerns directly to the president and his team.

At the height of the questions over Pete Hegseth’s selection for Defense secretary, and just before a vote was scheduled for later in the week, Tillis warned Thune the votes may not have been there. The North Carolina Republican suggested the vote be delayed. Thune encouraged Tillis to direct that message to the White House while making clear he was not moving the vote.

Tillis ultimately supported Hegseth.

“I don’t think I have had him say, ‘Hey, you need to be here with the team on this,’” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who has voted against a handful of Trump’s nominees including Hegseth. “When I have shared with him where I am, he has been appreciative that I have been open with him, and that I am not leaving him in a lurch.”

Shortly after he was elected leader, Thune pitched his Senate colleagues on the idea that two separate bills to advance Trump’s agenda, rather than one, would be the fastest and most surefire way to deliver the president an injection of cash to the border and Pentagon, a position he’s consistently pushed despite an evolving series of unforeseen obstacles from the House and the White House.

On Friday, in the wee hours of the morning, the Senate confirmed the budget resolution 52 to 48 with only one GOP defection, the first step in a long process but still a victory.

“It’s called leadership,” Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the former chair of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, told CNN. “Leaders are effective because they are decisive.”

CNN’s Morgan Rimmer and Jenna Monnin contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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