The second-highest ranking Republican in the Senate has endorsed former President Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota – a previous outspoken critic of Trump – endorsed Trump during an interview Saturday with Fox News.
The network reported Thune phoned Trump on Saturday after his win in the South Carolina primary.
When speaking on the 2024 election, the senator said he was in the former president’s corner.
“I support former President Trump’s campaign to win the presidency, and I intend to do everything I can to see that he has a Republican majority in the Senate working with him to restore American strength at home and abroad,” Thune told Fox.
Trump and Thune clashed after the 2020 election when Thune declined to support Trump’s challenge to now-President Joe Biden’s victory. In December 2020, The Hill reported at the time, Thune predicted the efforts would “go down like a shot dog.”
On Jan. 1, 2021, Trump called for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem or some other Republican to challenge Thune in the Senate primary in 2022.
Noem declined and Thune faced only token opposition in the primary. He cruised to re-election in the general election with 70 percent of the vote, according to The Associated Press.
Two weeks after the 2020 election was certified, Thune said Trump did people a “disservice” by challenging the results, and said Trump bore some responsibility for the Jan . 6, 2021, Capitol incursion.
Does this endorsement matter?
“The president is, because of the ongoing claims about fraud in the election, got a lot of people very spun up, and I think he did a disservice to people across this country, including many in South Dakota that I’ve heard from who believe that the election was stolen,” Thune told KELO-TV in Sioux Falls in a Jan. 18 interview.
Regarding whether the election was stolen from Trump, Thune concluded, “It was not.”
“The election was won and lost fairly and squarely,” the senator added. “There are always incidents of irregularities and fraud as there are in every election, but nothing on a level that would have changed any outcome in any state.”
Thune went on to say Trump “encouraged” angry voters to gather in Washington the day of the riot but he stopped short of blaming Trump solely for the chaos.
“I don’t think you can hold him responsible for violent behavior, unless of course there, that can be proven that he encouraged that, which I have not seen,” Thune told KELO.
After the Democrat-led House voted to impeach Trump after he left office in January 2021, Thune was among those in the GOP Senate who declined to take up the case and convict him.
The senator said in a statement that impeachments were intended to remove presidents from office, which did not apply to Trump weeks after he had packed up and left the White House for Florida.
“I have great concerns with the Senate punishing a private citizen with the sole intent of disqualifying him from holding future office,” Thune said.
Securing Thune’s endorsement puts Trump closer to clinching the GOP nomination and perhaps seeing more Republicans coalesce around him.
Thune is widely believed to be a potential successor of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been the party’s leader in the upper chamber since 2007.
