Hamza Adam 
House Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is being warned to push back against President Donald Trump to avoid earning a legacy as a “bootlicker,” according to a new Politico profile.
Thune beat out Trump loyalist Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who, at 83 and in precarious health, announced his retirement in February.
Thune has openly criticized Trump in the past, but has remained “mostly mum” on Trump’s rapid dismantling of the government since becoming president, “questioning here and there but generally signaling at least partial or tacit consent,” according to the article.
Democratic operative Steve Jarding told writer Michael Kruse, “He’s going to have to pick. If I’m John Thune, OK, I want the title — but I want a legacy and I don’t want my legacy to be that I was a bootlicker for Donald Trump.”
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Mark Salter, a longtime adviser to the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said of Thune, “I would hope there’s a little inner turmoil. You are watching the executive branch usurp all the power and authorities given Congress under Article I. Maybe he thinks, ‘I’ll preserve my influence, and down the road, when something worse comes along, I’ll be able to stop him from doing it’ — but it’s going to get harder to oppose him, not easier.”
According to CNN, Trump and Thune have forged a “productive working relationship,” with Trump thanking him on Truth Social for steering the Senate to fund the “Trump-Border Agenda.” And Thune hasn’t overtly criticized the president since Trump took office.
In the aftermath of the Oval Office blowup with Volodymyr Zelensky, when many Republicans expressed their dismay that Trump seemed to back Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine’s president, “Thune did what he does,” Kruse wrote, recounting how Thune told South Dakota’s Mitchell Republic, “No question in my mind that Russia is the aggressor.”
“But,” Kruse wrote, “he didn’t clearly criticize the interaction or Trump’s part, calling the meeting ‘spirited’ and pointing to the future.”
Read the Politico article here.
source https://www.rawstory.com/john-thune-donald-trump-2671331646/