It’s not clear what Thune is really on board with, though, and he didn’t sound like he’s gung ho for recess appointments.

Sen. John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader-Elect, sounded more interested in threatening Democrats to approve Donald Trump’s totally unqualified cabinet picks than in promising to ram them through via recess appointments.

It seems to me there was some talking out of both sides of a mouth here.

First of all, Thune falsely claimed that Donald Trump got a “big mandate.” Then he said that Americans “want President Trump to fix some things, and he wants to get a team in place that can do that, and we're going to work with him to see that he gets his team installed as quickly as possible so he can implement his agenda.”

I wrote an as-yet unpublished post for Crooks and Liars yesterday discussing how four of Trump’s most important cabinet picks are shockingly unqualified for the job of keeping us safe. That’s Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. None of them will be fixing anything except for Trump and his band of MAGA cultists.

But while Thune was issuing threats to Democrats, he hardly sounded like he was about to give up the Senate’s role of vetting nominees:

THUNE: All these people have a process that they have to go through. All these nominees are - it's, you know, advise and consent. That's the Senate's constitutional role when it comes to confirmation of nominations to the executive branch of the government, and we take that role seriously, but we also are not going to allow the Democrats to obstruct or block President Trump and the will of the American people.

BRET BAIER (ANCHOR): So, you have said that you would do recess appointments if it came to that. What's the threshold for getting to that point for recess appointments?

THUNE: Well, what I said is Brett, and I think this is that all options are on the table, including recess appointments. Hopefully it doesn't get to that, but we'll find out fairly quickly whether the Democrats want to play ball or not, and I think part of it is getting these folks will start having confirmation hearings as soon as the new senate is sworn in in January.

The president takes the oath of office, January 20, by the time he takes the oath of office, hopefully a lot of those nominees will be through their confirmation hearings and will be ready to act on them on the Senate floor. And then it's a question of how much to the Democrats resist or object or try to block those nominations from going forward. And we're going to grind them out. I mean, we're just going to keep consistently moving and and we'll see what kind of cooperation we get, and then we'll, you know, like I said, we'll make decisions about where do we go from there, right?

Baier actually did a fairly good job here, in my opinion, of pressing Thune for information, albeit from a pro-Trump stance. Baier noted that Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are on the Health Committee and have already raised some concerns about RFK Jr. Also, that “already some Republicans” have spoken out against Matt Gaetz. “The numbers start to get problematic,” Baier said. “If that is a problem, and your onus for you is to try to get the president who he wants to be in the cabinet, do you then punt to a recess and try to recess the Senate for 10 days and get those appointments in?”

Thune did not sound too eager to go that route.

THUNE: Well, it's an option, but obviously it takes, you know, you have to have all Republicans vote to recess as well. So, the same Republicans that you mentioned that might have a problem voting for somebody under regular order probably also have a problem voting to put the Senate into recess, you have to have concurrence from the House. There's a process. All this is a process.

But I don't think any of those things are necessarily off the table. I think we have to have all the options on the table. And these nominees deserve their day in court. They deserve a hearing, confirmation hearing, an opportunity to be vetted, and the Senate will perform its constitutional role under advice and consent, but we are not going to allow the Democrats to thwart the will of the American people in giving President Trump the people that he wants in those positions to implement his agenda.

…

President Trump had a huge, huge mandate from the American people, not only the popular vote, the electoral vote, they were historic. And the people in this country want change. He wants to bring that about. And I always believe that you defer to a president when it comes to the people they want in their in their cabinet, and to do a lot of these important jobs, but obviously there is a process whereby we get down and scrub all these nominees and figure out whether or not one they're qualified and and are they people who are fit to hold these offices?

Thune was also non-committal about the use of a budget reconciliation process to pass any of Trump's agenda. He also said that when it comes to “some executive actions” such as a border wall or deportations, “we want to be as helpful as we possibly can helping him achieve that, and look at as many legislative options to make that happen.”

Thune repeated a few more times the lie that Trump “got a big mandate from the American people.”

Then Baier asked about Trump putting billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on a board to “kind of look at cutting the federal government.” FACT CHECK: Baier is not telling the whole truth here. Musk and Ramaswamy want to SLASH federal spending, i.e. cut services for us, in order to pay for a big tax cut for Trump’s billionaire cronies. I guarantee you Trump did not get anything close to a mandate for that.

Then there was this:

BAIER: Is the Senate ready to really dismantle the federal bureaucracy like they're talking about?

THUNE: Well, I think this is, this is long overdue, honestly, and frankly, I'm excited because, you know, there is a very low percentage of federal workers who were actually back at work. There was one report not that long ago of a study that was reported on by the New York Times that said only 6% of federal workers are back. You know, if that's true, there ought to be some real opportunities to achieve some savings.

And frankly, for that matter, why do we have all these agencies, departments here in Washington, D.C.? They could be other places around the country, because people aren't showing up at the office anyway. So, I think there's a, you know, there's a real opportunity here, some of which can be done through the president's executive actions, some of which may need to go through the Congress again, which means you got in the Senate. That's not easy. You got to have some Democrats. But I think people in this country are ready. They are hungry for a leaner, more effective, more efficient federal government that distributes power out of Washington, gets the control out of here and back in the hands of the American people.

So, to me, Thune is trying to look eager to help Trump while actually hedging bets. My guess is he's waiting to hear more from his caucus before deciding on how much to kowtow to Trump.

Thune definitely did not sound eager to ram through Gaetz or RFK Jr via a recess appointment. Though I’ll never bet on any Republican having the spine to buck the felonious p***y grabber.

BAIER: And finally, just back to those appointments. Do you think Matt Gaetz can get through?

THUNE: Well, I don't know the answer to that just yet. I mean, obviously the - as you point out there, there certainly are some skeptics, but he deserves a process.

BAIER: RFK Jr. You think he can get through? The same answer?

THUNE: They deserve a process, yeah. I mean, when there are nominees that the president has made, put forward, and you know, the Senate has the the role of advice and consent under the Constitution, so they deserve a hearing and we'll proceed accordingly.

If there are recess appointments, Thune and his gang will blame Democrats, ludicrous as that might sound.

BAIER: Would you have to do recess appointments? You're saying yes or no?

THUNE: I hate to say yes or no, because I think that's still an open question. My view is we want to do this the regular way, and so you give the Democrats a chance to work with us on getting people in place, and the first ones are going to come up with a national security, and I hope the Democrats will work with us on defense and CIA and NSA and some of those in state. But if they, if, if they become obstacles and obstructionists to moving these along, I mean, we're going to, we're going to grind them out on the floor of the United States Senate. I just said we're not, we're not taking any options off the table.

You can watch this interview below, from the November 14, 2024 Special Report. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.