This week got underway on Capitol Hill under a cloud of irony. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and his GOP leadership team were prepared to act quickly on Jay Clayton’s nomination in part to help ease tensions between Senate Republicans and the White House.
It was a straightforward calculus: Thune was mindful of the recent strains in the relationship between the president and the GOP-led chamber, and swift action on Trump’s handpicked choice for director of national intelligence could serve as an olive branch of sorts.
Except, Trump didn’t want an olive branch. On the contrary, just hours before the Senate Intelligence Committee was scheduled to hold Wednesday morning’s confirmation hearing with Clayton, the president announced he had decided to delay Clayton’s nomination and instead to push the Senate to deliver some unrelated goals that lack the necessary GOP support.
Republicans tried to push back, announcing that they were moving forward with the confirmation hearing anyway, only to learn that the White House directed Clayton not to participate, causing GOP senators to grudgingly abandon their plans.
Asked about the president’s reasoning, Thune told reporters midday, “Good question.” He added that he and his colleagues would “have to take it a day at a time until we get more clarity on kind of what the White House position is, I guess.”
The phrasing might have seemed temperate, but this was about as close as the South Dakota Republican gets to expressing deep public frustration with his own party’s president.
Evidently, the feeling is mutual. The New York Times reported:
President Trump may be trying to wind down his conflict with Iran, but he is escalating his war with Senate Republicans.
Mr. Trump blindsided his supposed allies in the Senate on Wednesday with a rocket of a social media post from across the Atlantic. … It was an extraordinary move from a president whose own party controls the chamber, but just the latest sign of a major rupture between Mr. Trump and G.O.P. senators as the midterm elections approach.
The list of conflicts between the Republican White House and the Senate’s Republican leadership is long and growing. On everything from the fate of the filibuster to Bill Pulte’s acting DNI appointment, the $1.776 billion compensation fund to the Senate parliamentarian, Trump’s 2026 endorsements to details on the war in Iran, the chamber’s “blue slip” practice to the anti-voting SAVE America Act, Thune and Trump are not on the same page.
With this in mind, when the president blew up senators’ plans for the Clayton nomination, it was a slap in the face to Thune, but it also appeared to be quite deliberate — as if Trump were looking for a way to exert dominance and tell the majority leader who’s really in charge.
Indeed, as important as the intraparty fissures are, what’s especially important is coming to terms with why the problem is getting worse.