GOP Senate Leader Bluntly Tells Fox’s Hannity That Trump’s Bid to Kill Filibuster Has No Shot: I’ve Told Him This ‘Many Times’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SC) bluntly declared on Hannity Monday evening that efforts to persuade the Senate to kill the filibuster would not succeed, noting he had attempted to convey this message to President Donald Trump “many times.”

Trump has vociferously called for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, demanding that the narrow Republican majorities in the House and Senate to vote for it, and even urged them to take steps like giving up their scheduled August recess or killing the filibuster in the Senate to do so.

But some of the members of that narrow GOP majority are fighting tough re-election battles and others are now counting down their final days in office after losing brutal internecine primary battles to Trump-backed challengers, their feelings about party loyalty perhaps no longer quite so fervent.

Regardless, both Thune and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) have repeatedly said the math just does not add up to enough votes to pass the bill.

Last week, Thune told reporters who were asking about Trump’s unrelenting insistence on passing the SAVE America Act that if he wants it passed, maybe he or White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt “or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes.”

That message does not appear to have sunken in; Trump raged at Thune on his Truth Social account Monday morning.

So the Senate Majority Leader sat down with Sean Hannity, a longtime confidant of the president, who is known to watch his show.

Hannity noted the “very slim majorities” that Thune and Johnson had and commented that he knew that Trump “has leaned on you hard,” before asking the Senator what “percentage” of Trump’s “priorities” he thought they could “have done before the midterm elections,” noting that the president “has a lot on his wish list.”

Thune acknowledged that the “main thing” Trump wants is the SAVE America Act, and they had had “multiple votes on it,” with “not a single Democrat” voting for it. He spoke briefly about some procedural tactics, like putting it in a budget reconciliation bill, before emphasizing that it was “no easy feat” to move forward because “we don’t have 50 votes for it today, but hopefully we can get there.”

“Getting rid of the filibuster — nonstarter? You don’t have the votes?” asked Hannity.

Replied Thune:

Well, we don’t. And I’ve actually — I’ve had this conversation with the president many times, I think as you know.

I actually suggested at one point that they — his team come up and sit down and visit with some of my colleagues. So they came up, about twenty Republican senators, and fifteen were a no, on getting rid of the filibuster. The votes aren’t there to do it.

I know he thinks he can persuade people, but there are a lot of folks who are very — this is a hard position for a lot of Senate Republicans.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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