GOP Senators Don’t Expect John Thune to Be a Check on Donald Trump

Republicans are already falling in line for Trump, even as the president-elect is, as Sen. Tim Kaine put it, “testing to see whether Republican senators have a gag reflex or not.”

John Thune, John Barrasso
Mark Schiefelbein/AP

To hear the Founding Fathers tell it, the Senate is supposed to be a deliberative check on the president. But to hear Republican senators tell it on Thursday, they won’t be restraining Donald Trump much at all.

When NOTUS asked Sen. Josh Hawley if new GOP Leader John Thune would provide any check on the incoming president, Hawley was definitive: “No.”

“Check means blocking pieces of his agenda or slowing it down,” Hawley said. “And [Thune] just said in his leadership meeting he would absolutely not do that, that he would be pedal to the metal, that he would push through nominees, that he would push through legislation.”