{"id":17500,"date":"2026-01-09T19:46:53","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T19:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/john-thune-and-donald-trump-had-a-spirited-conversation-over-senate-war-powers-vote\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T19:46:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T19:46:53","slug":"john-thune-and-donald-trump-had-a-spirited-conversation-over-senate-war-powers-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/john-thune-and-donald-trump-had-a-spirited-conversation-over-senate-war-powers-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"John Thune and Donald Trump had a \u2018spirited\u2019 conversation over Senate war powers vote"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

McALLEN, Texas \u2014 Shortly after five Republican senators<\/a> broke with Donald Trump and voted Thursday to advance a measure constraining his military options in Venezuela, the president lashed out and called for them to lose their seats.<\/p>\n

Before he turned to Truth Social, however, he connected with John Thune and gave him a piece of his mind.<\/p>\n

The Senate majority leader acknowledged the \u201cvery spirited\u201d conversation with the angry president in an interview Friday after appearing with several Republican senators and candidates along the U.S.-Mexico border to promote last year\u2019s GOP megabill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a level of frustration at the White House \u2014 and with us, too, on a vote like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The war-powers fight is hardly over \u2014 the Senate still needs to debate and pass the resolution that was advanced Thursday, and even if the House passes it, which is unlikely, Trump could still veto it. But the surprising procedural vote contributed to a narrative that Trump is losing his grip<\/a> on congressional Republicans after running roughshod over potential GOP renegades in 2025.<\/p>\n

Two of the five senators \u2014 Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska \u2014 supported a previous effort to rein Trump in on Venezuela. Three others \u2014 Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana \u2014 were more surprising.<\/p>\n

Thune declined to predict whether he would be able to flip at least two to block the resolution\u2019s passage next week, but he signaled a lobbying effort is underway.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously we\u2019d love to have some of our colleagues come back around on that issue,\u201d he said. \u201cThe constitutional questions, the legal questions, are being more sufficiently answered as people have probed into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he added that, for his part, no grudges would be held \u2014 no matter the outcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important vote isn’t the last vote, it’s the next vote,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the end of the day, there are going to be a lot more votes coming, and circumstances in which we’re going to have our team united as much as possible and work with the president.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McALLEN, Texas \u2014 Shortly after five Republican senators broke with Donald Trump and voted Thursday to advance a measure constraining his military options in Venezuela, the president lashed out and called for them to lose their seats. Before he turned to Truth Social, however, he connected with John Thune and gave him a piece of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}