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Thune has been scheduling interviews on a near-daily basis as the Senate prepares to vote on Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” He started the week with an appearance on Shannon Bream’s Fox News Sunday, followed by three other TV and radio hits.
The media circuit is familiar to Thune — since he became majority leader in January, he’s gone on national TV 29 times. His appearances on radio and podcasts have now reached double digits.
But the messaging has taken on new consequence as Thune faces the biggest test of his early tenure. With just days to meet his self-imposed July 4 deadline to pass the tax cut-and-border bill, Thune is corralling votes under an onslaught of criticism, including loud complaints from his right flank.
On Wednesday, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), one of the Senate’s GOP holdouts, released a report directly challenging Thune’s insistence that the bill, which includes more than $1 trillion in budget offsets, won’t add to the deficit.
Democrats, meanwhile, have framed the legislation as a welfare-slashing healthcare bill that is skewed toward the rich.
