Thune on his future, 2026 and Trump

0:00Presented by AT&T, those who run toward danger must have a reliable way to connect. First net built with AT&T is built with and for first responders, expanding connectivity where public safety needs it and supporting public safety's response to emergencies in every state across America. Congress must reauthorize First Net without delay to sustain and safeguard America's public safety communications capabilities. Visit AT&TConnects.com, backslash public safety to learn more. Good morning, I'm Jake Sherman. I'm Randy Peterson. And welcome to the Daily Punch Broadtube by PunchPoll News. It is Friday, September 11, 2026. Let's get into the mix here, or your Washington headlines of the day number one. John Thunes, vision of the Senate map number two inside the Senate September agenda and number three HMP's red line affordability.

1:03Let's get into it, Brenda. Thanks for being here. It is the 25th anniversary today of the September 11, the tax. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will lead a ref laying service at the Pentagon. The president will then head to Ireland for his golf tournament for the Irish open, actually, Trump International in Dunebeg, Mayor Zoraan Mamdani will lead the annual 9-11 Memorial Service in New York. JD Vance is expected to attend as our former president's Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George Bush and Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is also scheduled to attend. There are 53 days until election day, but we are shifting gears in Dallas last night. For yesterday, rather, Max Cohen, interview John Thunes, and it's a very fascinating interview that I want to get into, Brenda. He is under no illusion about the tight as a tick nature, great saying of every competitive

2:03Senate race. He said they're all within the margin of error. He hopes that when people start focusing and realizing what's at stake, he said a lot of our voters start coming home. The most interesting thing to me is that Thunes, when Max asks Thun about his future, a Senate Republican leader, the South Dakota Republican said he'd wait to see what happens on election day, the Senate's a hard place, he said, and it's been especially hard, I would say, in my time of public life, he said he does everything in relation to Trump. He does everything he can when it's necessary to ensure that we're working closely together and talking regularly. That's not the case every day. Brenda, this to me just seems like a very honest assessment of both the Senate map and the political climate and his relationship with Donald Trump. Yeah, I would say John Thunes tends to be a pretty straight shooter. I think if you ask him, like, hey, do you like your job?

3:05He's probably going to be honest and say no. It has been a really tough time. I think one of the most interesting things, if you look at our colleague, Max, is coverage. He gets into sort of the crowd reaction in Dallas to Thunes being mentioned on stage, Senate Republicans in general, booze being able to be heard throughout the night. And Thunes talked about that. He said, quote, obviously, the reaction in the room when I get mentioned is something that's kind of baked in. I think it comes with the territory of this job. I mean, maybe not with this job, but certainly when Donald Trump is president, you have a recalculated Republican Senate. That's kind of built in. Sure. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the Senate map. Alex Latchem, who Max also interviewed here, said that SLF, which he leads, has raised well over $500 million to cycle and are spending earlier than ever. He said that he's seeing numbers move in his direction.

4:07But let's talk state by state here. Thun, Max Astun, how much that how much maga ink will have to spend in the lone star state. He said, I don't know what that number is, but whatever it takes, we need to make sure that Texas comes home. I feel really good about where we are here, but it's going to take money. This is a, this comes as a new ARP poll showed James Talleriko with a four point lead in the Senate race. And Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Benson in 1988. I don't know what I think about Texas. What do you think about the assessment from Thun and on whether Talleriko could win? Listen, I mean, I've seen the same clips as everybody else of Trump saying, you might not weigh like the way that Ken Paxton looks and talks, but gosh, it'd be nice if he won. I think if you have the president at that level of like, you have a problem.

5:07Although there's a lot of other places where it seems like Republicans will be competitive where maybe a year or two ago, we did not expect them to be competitive. Michigan and the campaign of my grandgers looks like it's going to have a shot in Michigan. In New Hampshire, Johnson, Nunu looks pretty good. A little long time New Hampshire name there. Georgia, it does not seem to be particularly within reach. But then, and then you got places like Kansas where Roger Marshall is suddenly like in, certainly not a tailspin by any means, but competitive, Kansas, competitive. Yeah, I guess what I would say here is that Thune's theory is Republican voters will come home. And what else could he think? Because he's down in a lot of polls or they're tightening a lot of polls. And the way most Republicans see it is that Georgia and North Carolina are gone for Republicans.

6:12I think that's probably a little bit of a stretch, but they're close to gone according to a lot of Republicans. They got to really compete in Michigan and New Hampshire to flip those two seats. Kansas, of course, does seem to be a stretch. But Thune said, like Texas, Democrats get hit, getty and hopeful, but in the end, Republican votes come home. Maybe so, maybe not, as Fish says. But I don't, you know, listen, Kansas has a Democratic governor. So, you know, it's not as if they don't elect Democrats. Of course, governor races are very different than Senate races. Still a statewide race, but there are a lot of states in America that elect one party are likely to elect or not likely, but they do elect one party for the Senate and never, sorry, one party for the governor and never for the Senate. Look at Massachusetts, which elects Republican governors and doesn't really elect Republicans to the Senate. So, very interesting stuff from Thune, Donald Trump will head to North Carolina, speaking of North Carolina next Wednesday, to Gastonia, which is a former Congressman Patrick McCannery's old district,

7:20and also where Michael Watley lives. He has consistently trailed Roy Cooper in the race for the Senate. When we get back, we are going to talk about the Senate September agenda, something you are qualified, Brendan, to talk about. Presented by AT&T, those who run toward danger must have a reliable way to connect. First net built with AT&T is built with and for first responders, expanding connectivity where public safety needs it, and supporting public safety's response to emergencies in every state across America. Congress must reauthorize First Net without delay to sustain and safeguard America's public safety communications capabilities. Visit ATTConnex.com, backslash public safety to learn more. Number two story of the morning, inside the Senate September agenda, John Thune has some major legislative item items on tap, excuse me, including a crypto market structure bill and NIL. He wants to confirm a handful of judicial nominees as well as a cabinet secretary. Thune says it's going to be a busy three week run. We'll see how productive it is, he said.

8:22So, let us talk about something that you are uniquely qualified to talk about, Brendan, which is crypto market structure. What is going to happen on that? Yeah, the part of Thune's quote where he says he's hopeful it's productive. A lot of that is going to start live and die with how the crypto bill goes. On September 15th, we have an initial procedural vote that's been scheduled for well over a month now on the clarity act that crypto market structure bill moving that forward. The politics here are very dodgy. We still don't really have a bipartisan bill. Republicans led by tips Scott and Cynthia alumnus keep introducing versions of this clarity act, which is now 630 pages. We scooped the latest version of the bill last night and released it. They're trying to create a package that Democrats can get on board with without without ever having handed Democrats the pen. To me, right now, as we're recording this, I do not know if Democrats are going to

9:26hop over and vote for cloture on the clarity act. If they do, then we're going to be talking about the clarity act for probably the next couple weeks at least. It's going to eat up a lot of floor time. There's other things that the Senate wants to get to. We'll get to that in a second. But they might not. There's a world in which Democrats just say like, listen, we have been asking for for any signs of life from the White House on a bipartisan ethics deal that would rein in the activities, crypto activities of President Donald Trump. It hasn't happened yet. There is a world where Democrats say, well, we're not thrilled with the underlying bill yet, but as a token of good faith, blah, blah, blah, blah, we will vote for cloture and get this party started. I just don't know the Democrats are there yet. I think some Democrats are there. But I don't know if you have enough to get to 60, particularly when Republicans have a lot of problems on their side of the fence. After that, there's also an NIL bill that comes, you know, to be honest with you, comes in the middle of just turmoil inside college sports. Football season has started. Basketball season is around the corner. We have,

10:30you know, just college sports needs, needs like many things in the world need Senate and Congress intervention to get back to a normal place. But, you know, this is going to be at most a three-week session. And if they don't have a lot of momentum and a lot of action, they could make this a two-week session. Number three story of the morning, HMP has a new red line and that's affordability on fly out day yesterday. Mike Smith made a lot of news and he said that anyone that's not hyper focused on cost of living and economy as their number one issue, do not expect to see any support from House majority packers. A really interesting quote, Brendan. He talked about democracy and he said democracy is a really important issue at the end of the day. If we see that a candidate's talking about something like democracy over cost of living, then like that's when they should not expect to see help from us because we want them laser focused on the thing that matters most of voters, which is the economy. I thought this was very interesting, Brendan, because there were a lot of

11:31people in 2018 and in past elections that ran on a message of saving democracy. They ran that 24 certainly. That was the cornerstone of the Harris. Yeah. And what Mike Smith is saying is that he is not interested in that. I mean, the economy is the number one issue. I mean, this morning we had gas crossover, sorry, oil crossover, the $110 barrel mark. We have diesel at more than $6. He thinks that you just got to talk about all the time. What do you think about that? I mean, obviously, Brendan, we know that affordability is the major issue. So what do you, what's your thoughts? I think they're speaking to what do you, I mean, you're running in an election in a national election. You've got to be thinking about the national headwinds and the headwinds are economy bad, economy bad. That's why we're talking about the Kansas Senate race. I keep coming back to that. There are just not many moments where an

12:35opposition party can run against the president and his party that has triggered a war that is very unpopular and had immediate economic ramifications snapback. It's just there's so many things that can point to revolving around the economy. And remember how anyone could forget, but like Democrats were handed a historic loss in 2024 by the whims of the economy and the post-COVID inflation that we all dealt with. I think like Democrats learned that lesson very acutely and they're like, well, this is a nice hammer. It'd be a shame if I hit you with it, but I am going to hit you with this hammer. Yep. That's exactly right. Now, very interesting, Smith also, as we broke in the in the PM edition forecast, it had 10 to 15 seat Democratic majority, something that that is more than we've heard any Democratic official or campaign officials say so far. He said that Smith Smith said that he has pulled HMP has pulled about 70 races so far and Trump won

13:37those seats by an average of six points or so. And Trump is currently underwater by 12 to 15 points. So the way Democrats see it, Brendan, it is fine if Donald Trump is all over the news for the next couple of months because he is in their view and their polls way underwater. And with that, leave us a rating and review. You can subscribe to PunchballNews at PunchBall.News. Have a great day, a great weekend and stay safe, everybody.