Senator John Thune is criticizing Republican activists and party leaders for engaging in the “culture of cancellation” by rushing to censor Republican senators who found former President Donald Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection.
In his first interview since voting for Trump’s acquittal, the second Senate Republican on Thursday defended his fellow Republicans who sided with Democrats in the “vote of conscience” and warned against blocking dissident voices in the party.
“There was a strong case,” said Thune of the Democrats’ impeachment presentation. “People can come to different conclusions. If we are going to criticize the media and the left for canceling the culture, we cannot do it ourselves ”.
Thune’s remarks were the first to explain his vote at Trump’s trial and assess the turbulent Republican policy the former president left behind. Thune, who faces re-election next year in deeply conservative South Dakota, is among several Republicans struggling to regain control of a Trump-dominated party and its most fervent supporters for years.
The senator rarely criticized Trump while he was in office. But he called the ex-president’s actions after the election “inexcusable” and accused him of undermining the peaceful transfer of power.
Still, Thune last week sided with most Republican senators and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell in the vote to absolve anyway. Thune and others argued that Trump could not be charged because he was already out of office. Thune said after his vote that he was concerned about the idea of ”punishing an ordinary citizen with the sole intention of disqualifying him for a future position”. Democrats were 10 votes short of the 67 needed to condemn.
Since then, Trump has attacked McConnell and repeated the baseless claim that he won the election. The comments ignited a feud that is likely to happen in the Republican primaries between candidates supported by Trump and those supported by the establishment wing.
Thune suggested that he would take steps to help candidates “who don’t go out and talk about conspiracies and that sort of thing.” He praised Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, who was censored by the Wyoming Republican Party for voting for Trump’s impeachment, for doing “exceptional work on most issues” and said he was ready to enter primary battles like the one she is sure to face.
“At the grassroots level, there are a lot of people who want to see candidates like Trump,” he said. “But I think we are going to look for candidates who are elected.”
Thune himself was hit by Trump last year after he said efforts by some members of the Republican Party in the U.S. House to reject the results of the Electoral College “would fall like a gunshot” in the Senate. Trump called Thune “RINO”, which means Republican in name only, and “Mitch’s boy”, in reference to McConnell. The attacks inspired some Trump supporters in South Dakota to pile up for a primary challenge to the state’s senior senator, whose candidacy was not contested in previous elections.
On Thursday, the senator tried to minimize these attacks by comparing them to “food fights within the family” that undermined the Republicans’ goals. He noted that there was no evidence to support Trump’s claim about electoral fraud.
“You have to face the music and, at some point, it has to end and you have to move on,” he said, adding, “I think it’s important to tell people the truth. The most important responsibility of any leader is to define reality. “