Thune Joins Guy Benson on Fox News Radio

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WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined Guy Benson on Fox News Radio.

On Democrats' DHS shutdown:

"The Democrats have now kept the department shut down for 41 days. It's a shutdown of their own design and their own making, and it's the second one. As you know, from last fall we had a 43, the longest shutdown in American history, and that was for all of government. But this one is rooted, really, in a deep desire on the part of the Democrats to defund the men and women in federal law enforcement, who wake up every day with the sole mission of protecting American communities. And so among the shutdown hostages, in this case, you've got employees at TSA, you've got employees at Coast Guard, FEMA, CISA, which is the cybersecurity operations that the country uses to protect us from cyber attacks from foreign enemies …

"The administration has been engaging with [Democrats] in good faith now to end this shutdown, literally for weeks. And there are now 120,000 people at DHS who are missing paychecks. And many of them, as I said, they work with agencies that are crucial to our national security. So it's really a sad commentary on the current state of the Democrat party, but it's a reality, and it's one we're dealing with here in the United States Senate."

On Democrats' preposterous shutdown politics:

"I think that [Democrats] believe this is a political winner for them, and they want to create as much chaos as possible as we head into … the campaign season and the November elections. And there really isn't any good explanation for it, other than it's never enough. And when their far-left base, which is demanding not only that they defund ICE, but that they basically strip them of any of the authorities they have to enforce the law."

On voter ID:

"When we brought the SAVE America Act up on the floor … I used something that I have at my disposal, which is filling the amendment tree, which allows us to control the debate on the floor and which amendments ultimately get voted on. And one of the amendments I put on the tree, which we voted on earlier today, was a strictly photo ID requirement. Very clean, very straightforward. None of the other SAVE America Act elements to it. Just straightforward, purely and simply photo ID - which could be a government ID, it could be a driver's license … it could be a military ID, could be a tribal ID, any of those things would work.

"The Democrats … voted to block it. And it's remarkable, because in my remarks on the floor this morning, I had a chart where I put up the statements that a half a dozen Democrat senators have made, where they endorsed photo ID, said that it works really well, is very effective in their states if they've got, in a state that uses it. I mean, the hypocrisy on this knows no bounds … you can't make this stuff up …"

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