Senate Republicans say they’re ready for a new start with President-elect Trump after years of misgivings and mistrust that sometimes boiled over into all-out war between the disruptor-in-chief and members of Washington’s traditional GOP establishment.
Trump’s critics in the Senate GOP conference are trying to reconcile themselves with what they privately view as some of Trump’s outlandish pronouncements and wrongheaded policy choices.
Those include proposals to take over the Panama Canal and Greenland and to slap 25-percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
They acknowledge he won a sweeping victory in the 2024 election, which hardly any of them foresaw before the presidential primary.
Even so, tensions remain between Republican senators and Trump over tariffs, the strategy for passing his agenda and some of his controversial Cabinet picks, such as Director of National Intelligence-nominee Tulsi Gabbard.
At the same time Senate Republicans recognize that Trump’s critics within the party have either come around to embracing him or have found themselves relegated to the sidelines of power.
“He did better than all of us politically. It’s in our interest to keep working with him,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s staunchest allies, referring to Trump’s strong performance in the 2024 election, in which 89 percent of the nation’s counties shifted in Trump’s favor.
“Personally, I want him to be successful, he’s a friend,” said Graham, who golfs with Trump.
But he acknowledged that Trump and Senate Republicans don’t see eye-to-eye on some major issues, such as the best strategy for passing border-security funding and a major tax package.
“We still have tension about to proceed with reconciliation,” Graham, the Senate Budget Committee chairman, said of the divergent views over whether to break up Trump’s agenda into two packages or pass it in one big bill, as Trump prefers, under the budget reconciliation process to avoid a Democratic filibuster.
“It’s not that we don’t want him to be successful but we all have different views on important topics,” he said.
Graham said there are also still agreements over tariffs, but GOP lawmakers are willing to give Trump room to set trade policy, despite warnings that it could slow economic growth.
“He won, give him a chance,” Graham said.
He said his Senate colleagues, especially those who have criticized Trump, “are going to come out with a new attitude.”
That new dynamic is helped by the fact that some of Trump’s biggest past critics — former Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), to name a few — are no longer in Congress.
And Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who castigated Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, has stepped down as GOP leader.
Part of the new attitude in the Senate GOP conference is deferring to Trump on his nominees, trade policies and strategy for passing his agenda in one massive bill — even they privately disagree with him over them.
Senate GOP sources said in early December that Pete Hegseth’s nomination to head the Department of Defense was headed to defeat.
But that’s before Trump and his army of social media allies turned up the pressure on Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and others to fall into line.
Graham said after Hegseth’s contentious hearing last week that his confirmation was “assured” and Ernst announced she would vote for him, despite her initial reluctance to endorse the pick.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Republicans who battled with Trump in the past realize he has a strong mandate coming out of the November election.
“Anybody’s who crossed swords with him recognize he won a big victory and they’re going to go along with it,” he said.
But he cautioned that doesn’t mean Republican lawmakers will side with the incoming president on everything, especially his plan to substantially raise tariffs.
“There are still things we’re going to disagree on. I disagree on tariffs. I think it’s important, one, for our economy but also, two, for the future of both our party and country that there are some people who are for trade and recognize the value of trade,” Paul said.
He emphasized that he will remain a strong ally on partisan issues, pointing back to his defense of Trump during his two impeachment trials in 2020 and 2021.
“I’m supporting most of his nominees. I just helped do the Kristi Noem hearing and Russ Vought hearing,” he said referring to Trump’s picks to head the Department of Homeland Security and White House budget office.
On key issues, like the deficit, however, Paul said he won’t be afraid to break with Trump and party leaders.
“I’m not a guaranteed vote on reconciliation. If they put the debt ceiling on [it,] they probably lose me,” he said. “If they have spending number on the budget that doesn’t appear to do anything serious [about the deficit,] they lose me.
“Those fights are going to go on. People are alarmed. There are some of us, at least a handful of us on the Republican side that are alarmed by how much money we’re spending and how rapidly the debt is growing,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has tried hard to patch up his relationship with Trump since their falling out over Trump’s effort to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Thune whipped his colleagues to vote against objections to electoral slates, declaring that the effort to overturn the election would “god down like a shot dog.”
That infuriated Trump, who called for Thune to face a primary challenger in 2022 — a threat that fizzled when Thune cruised to an easy re-election.
Thune and his wife met with Trump in Mar-a-Lago in March to diffuse the tension in their relationship, and it appears to have worked. Trump resisted some of his closest allies who tried to persuade him in November to block Thune from ascending to the top Senate Republican leadership position.
And while Thune pledged during the leadership race to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell (R- Ky.) that he would work closely with Trump, he appears intent on preserving the Senate’s independence, according to Republican senators close to him.
Thune has pushed back on Trump’s demand to put the Senate into extended recess, if necessary, to allow him to make presidential recess appointments.
Thune has argued that if there aren’t the votes to confirm Trump’s nominees under regular order, there won’t be the votes to send senators home for more than ten days to open the door to emergency appointments.
Thune told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his relationship with Trump is “evolving.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Trump overcame his old feud with Thune by recognizing “John Thune is the right guy for the job.”
“Having John Thune in that position makes it a lot easier for him to get a lot of his stuff accomplished because John knows the processes, he knows the procedures and he is a straight shooter,” he said.
“If you got a guy who will stand and tell you the truth, president’s need that,” he added. “John has a way of expressing a different view once in a while but not doing it in an antagonistic way and still getting the same results.”
One Thune ally argued that Thune’s assertiveness in defending the Senate’s Constitution duty to provide “advice and consent” on Trump’s nominees has earned the president-elect’s respect.
“I think they’re actually pretty good. In some ways, the president, if he can be objective about it, may have a deeper respect for Thune in that he wasn’t afraid to bristle under the president before,” the source added.
The GOP senator said both Trump and Thune recognize they need each other to be successful.
“It’s a mutual need society. They both need each other and they’re both smart enough to recognize” they need to push pass disagreements “aside,” the lawmaker said.
The senator noted that Trump emphasized at a recent meeting at the Capitol his desire to work with GOP lawmakers to score legislative wins.
“The tone he struck with in the room … was more like a business meeting than a political rally,” the senator said, explaining that Trump took a pragmatic approach to discussing the best path for enacting his agenda.
“He’s less combative, at this point,” the senator said. “He basically said the bottom for me is success.”
