Thune Joins The Ben Shapiro Show, Martha MacCallum, The Hugh Hewitt Show

Click here to watch Shapiro, here to watch MacCallum, and here to listen to Hewitt.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined The Ben Shapiro Show, Martha MacCallum on Fox News, and The Hugh Hewitt Show.

On the SAVE America Act:

"The SAVE America Act is a package of just commonsense policies that should get an automatic 'yes,' literally from every member of the Senate. And the core of it … is a requirement for Americans to demonstrate that they're eligible to vote and that they are who they say they are when they go to do so. And requiring a photo ID for a whole lot of things in this country is something that … Americans expect. You would think that [the Democrats would] be able to produce one to vote in our elections … We just have to do everything we can to make sure that we're pounding [Democrats] over the course of the next week or two, and then we'll see where the votes are."

[…]

"[Democrats' position is] a very indefensible position, in my view, to say that noncitizens ought to be able to vote in American elections, but that seems to be the position that they've adopted at the moment. But we've got an opportunity, over the course of the next few days and perhaps into next week, to litigate the issue, to have … the debate on the floor, and to put Democrats on defense and on the record on whether or not they think it ought to be just American citizens who vote in American elections. This is a very straightforward issue, and we intend to make sure that the choice is clear."

On preserving the legislative filibuster:

"Historically … the filibuster has protected conservative principles and priorities way more than it has Democrats'. And Democrats, typically, if you look throughout history, have had majorities in the House and the Senate more frequently than Republicans … The idea of enabling all the things that [Democrats] would do if they were able to nuke the legislative filibuster and pass their agenda with 51 votes, you'd start with … adding Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., as states. You'd go to expanding the Supreme Court. You'd federalize our elections. You'd have a wealth tax. You'd have … abortion on demand …

"Republicans in the Senate, by a big majority, support the legislative filibuster for that reason, and they understand how it's protected us in the past. It's a feature of the Senate that goes back to the country's founding. The Senate was designed to be a place to give the minority a voice in our lawmaking process. It's a way that the founders divided power in the Article I branch of the government between the House and the Senate.

"So there's a lot of support for the legislative filibuster. And frankly, the only way you would get the SAVE Act passed, absent Democrat support, would be to nuke the legislative filibuster. And the votes aren't there to do that. It's just a … function of math … I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's the reality that we have to deal with."

On Democrats' DHS shutdown:

"It's a dangerous world. We've got cyber threats, and the cyber office is located within the Department of Homeland Security, so that's also affected by this appropriation bill. And … it makes you wonder what is on [Democrats'] minds … They are held so hostage by the far left in the country right now and are so infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome and blind hatred of the president that they don't want to do anything … that gives him a victory.

"The White House has been very willing to negotiate … The administration has made numerous efforts to engage with the Democrats on some of the issues they care about, in ways that I think the Democrats ought to be willing to accept … This is about politics, nothing more, nothing less, for them."

Permalink: https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2026/3/thune-joins-the-ben-shapiro-show-martha-maccallum-the-hugh-hewitt-show