Sen. John Thune Elected as New Senate Majority Leader

As you say, we have a new senate majority leader, John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota. This went to a second ballot. There were three candidates in this race: John Uncornyn and Rick Scott.

The winner had to get a supermajority and had to take an outright majority of all 53 Republicans casting ballots. The magic number was 27. I should note incoming senators elected were in this meeting, and J.D. Vance was in this meeting. We don't know if everyone cast their ballots, but what happened is John Thune did not get to the magic number of 27.

He was a couple votes ahead of John Cornyn and Rick Scott me in with 13 votes for the Republican Conference Rules; third-place-get drops out. This boiled down to a two-day race between John Cornyn and John Thune. He's the second leader in the senate senate south Dakota. He came to T. Senaten 2004 after beating Tom Daschle, the democratic leader, majority leader, and minority leader.

John Cornyn had served as majority whip. Right now, John June was the minority whip, and there was a certain group of Senate Republicans who wanted to break from the current leadership team. Rick Scott ran for the Senate leadership post for two years against Mitch McConnell. He only got ten votes to theirs, but he ran again and did a little better.

It wasn't enough to beat John June. A lot of people talked about why one candidate might prevail in this. It was generally believed John Thune had done the most work, raised a lot of money, done a lot of campaigning, and had the best relationships. What will Hill's relationship be with Donald Trump?

There was a point on the same page by Anstretch back in 2016 after the Hollywood tape, Thune asking Donald Trump, then candidate Trump to vote off the ballot. After the second impeachment trial in early 2020, one after the capital riot, he wanted to acquit; John Thune did, but he said he thought he tried to subvert democracy, but since that time, he and the president elect have patched things up.

You have this meeting close to the capital this morning between President-elect Trump, House Speaker Mi Johnson, and Dollhouse Republicans. We thought it would be a meeting with the new leader, whoever that was going to be, and Donald Trump; we don't think it's going to happen at some point today. It might happen later this weekend. Do expect that from the new leadership team later this afternoon.

They have a couple of other races of their down ballot parse out, and that is something they will continue to do as they debate es candadies for lower-tier leadership positions in the Senate chamber. And I should note this. We might not definitively know who voted for o. The reason is a secret ballot.