John Thune spent two years telling Trump and conservatives that the votes just weren't there for the SAVE America Act.
Tuesday night showed what two years of excuses cost Republicans.
What he did in the 24 hours after that collapse left conservatives absolutely furious.
Thune Lost the 2026 Midterms and Is Now Running for Senate Minority Leader
After Democrats flipped Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina, and South Carolina – giving Democrats at least a 54-44 Senate majority and full control of Congress for the final two years of Trump's presidency – Thune went on X and declared a strong record of accomplishment.
Democrats are currently ahead in Mississippi and Alaska, too, with both races heading toward legal fights.
He pointed to tax cuts, border security, and judges confirmed at a pace not seen since the Reagan administration.
That's a press release from a man pretending Election Day didn't happen.
Then it got worse.
A source confirmed to Fox News Digital that Thune is running for Senate minority leader – keeping his job after presiding over one of the worst Senate collapses in Republican history.
Republicans haven't lost this many Senate seats in a single midterm in decades.
In Kansas, Democrats ended a 94-year drought – flipping a seat the party hadn't held since 1932.
In Texas, they flipped the seat despite Elon Musk spending $224 million to stop them.
The Texas collapse didn't start on Election Day.
Thune and the Republican establishment spent nearly $100 million defending John Cornyn in the primary – a senator Texas Republicans had formally rebuked and booed off their own state convention stage in 2022 for shepherding Democrats' biggest federal gun control bill in decades.
The same week the gun bill passed, Cornyn was overheard on the Senate floor saying "First guns, now immigration" – the line that became a rallying cry for every conservative who wanted him gone.
Trump endorsed Ken Paxton and buried Cornyn 64-36 in the runoff – making him the first Texas Republican senator in history to lose a primary.
The brutal establishment-vs.-base battle fractured the Texas GOP heading into November and gave Democrats the opening they needed.
Thune's team could have pushed Cornyn to retire and recruited a clean candidate.
They chose to burn $100 million defending a senator Texas GOP voters were done with – and cracked open the door to the reddest major state in America.
The same establishment ran the broader campaign no better.
Thune's Senate Leadership Fund raised a record $500 million and spent it on transgender ads.
Ron DeSantis – who went to war with Disney over gender ideology in 2022 – said he knew Republicans were in trouble the moment he saw they were spending hundreds of millions on transgender ads across the country.
"Republicans were fighting in yesterday's battle," DeSantis said.
Last month, Pew Research asked Republican voters which issues mattered most – the economy, immigration, the future of democracy, violent crime, and the size of government rounded out the top five. Transgender issues ranked 15th out of 16.
They outspent Democrats nearly two-to-one and still handed them the Senate.
Thune still called it a success.
Conservative Backlash Against Thune Over the SAVE America Act Failure
Election-integrity attorney Cleta Mitchell took Thune apart on X.
She reminded him that the SAVE America Act – the bill requiring proof of citizenship to register for federal elections – passed the House of Representatives three times in 2026.
The bill had 71% public support, and Thune killed it every time by protecting the Senate filibuster.
Mitchell said he berated Sen. Mike Lee – the senator who pushed hardest to advance the bill – for trying to get the Senate to work full weeks in a chamber that sat just 148 days in 2026, telling him nobody cared about the SAVE America Act and to sit down and shut up.
Mitchell told Thune directly he had been a waste of space as Senate leader.
"Tuesday was the Thune election. You own it."
Conservative commentator Mike Cernovich had one demand – abolish the filibuster, pass the SAVE Act, confirm judges – then called Thune a demon inside a human skin suit.
"We have John Thune to thank for not passing the SAVE America Act," Rep. Nancy Mace wrote on X.
Federalist CEO Sean Davis and conservative journalist Jack Posobiec both called on him to resign.
As one conservative on Twitter wrote, the House had sent the Senate hundreds of bills to codify Trump's executive orders – every 80-20 and 90-10 issue on the table.
Thune went on Fox News and cried about not having the votes.
Thune Protected the Senate Filibuster and Now Democrats Own It
His justification: eliminating the filibuster would let Democrats run wild when they took power. He was right that Democrats would take power. He was catastrophically wrong that protecting the filibuster would stop them.
The SAVE Act died in the Senate – killed by the same 60-vote threshold Thune called a sacred institution. Now Democrats own it, and they'll wield that filibuster against everything Trump wants for the next two years.
Trump told Fox News he was "a little bit surprised" by the losses. Thune spent two years defying him on the SAVE Act and now needs Trump's blessing to keep his job – and admitted he doesn't "bank on it."
Thune protected the rules of the Senate more than he protected the country – and now he wants the title that proves he's still in charge of those rules.
Chuck Schumer just took them away from him.
Sources:
- Jim Hoft, "RINO John Thune Releases Self-Congratulatory Statement After GOP Gets CRUSHED in Midterms," The Gateway Pundit, November 4, 2026.
- "Thune Plans to Run for Republican Minority Leader After Dem's Midterm Takeover," Fox News Digital, November 4, 2026.
- Rich Mitchell, "Conservatives Blame John Thune for Stalled SAVE America Act as He Eyes Minority Leader Job," Conservative Daily News, November 4, 2026.
- "John 'Failure Is Not An Option' Thune Just Failed Election Integrity," The Federalist, May 13, 2026.
- "John Cornyn's Defeat Could Be the End of the GOP Establishment," The Blaze, May 2026.
- "John Cornyn's Second Amendment Compromises with Biden Hampering His Reelection Bid," Breitbart, June 2025.
- VigilantFox, Gov. Ron DeSantis Post-Midterm Remarks, November 4, 2026.
- President Trump, Fox News Election Night Interview, November 3, 2026.