Top figures in the MAGA world spent Wednesday complaining that their pick for Senate Majority Leader, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, didn’t clear the first round of voting.
Those upset took to social media and their podcasts to whine and even threaten to oust Sen. John Thune (R-SD)—who was voted into Senate leadership via secret ballot—if he doesn’t fall in line with all of Donald Trump’s requests.
“If he does not support President Trump in these next 30 to 45 days to fill President Trump’s cabinet, we will remove him,” said Charlie Kirk Real America’s Voice, referring to Thune.
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Kirk, of course, has no actual authority to remove Thune from Senate leadership. The right-wing activist and Turning Point USA founder does, however, have a significant following in the MAGA world.
Similarly, the the ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon—who hosts the daily podcast War Room—was also ticked over Thune’s win. He stated plainly on his podcast after it emerged that Scott had lost, “Victory is not ours. I don’t care how you dress it up, it’s not.”
Others to gripe about Scott’s defeat included Rogan O’Handley, the right-winger who runs the pro-Trump X account “DC Draino” that has two million followers. “Every Senator who voted for Rick Scott should publicly confirm it,” he said. “Then we can find out who the backstabbers are.”
O’Handley added in a separate post: “MAGA is p---ed.”
Ryan Fournier, the 28-year-old who founded Students for Trump, called the Senate leadership result “ridiculous.” The right-wing influencer Savanah Hernandez went as far as suggesting that Senators who didn’t vote for Scott should somehow be removed from office.
“We need to know which Senators voted for Thune and Cornyn,” Hernandez posted to her 600,000 followers on X. “The American people wanted Rick Scott in office and we made that clear on Nov 5th. This was an extremely important vote and the Senators who voted against Scott need to be ousted.”
The conservative activist Joey Mannarino concurred, writing, “If we find out you didn’t vote Rick Scott for Senate Majority Leader, we will absolutely primary the s--t out of you.”
Thune, 61, is a one-time Trump foe who went on to edge out Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in the second round of leadership voting. He’ll now takeover the job that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) held for nearly two decades.
Thune’s victory hints that Trump’s grip over GOP lawmakers may not be as iron clad as he’d hoped. While Thune and the president-elect appear to have largely repaired their relationship, Thune famously said in 2020 that Trump’s attempts to overturn his loss to Biden “would go down like a shot dog.” Trump responded by calling him a “RINO,” which is shorthand for a “Republican In Name Only.”
Trump, who requires the help of the Senate Majority Leader to have a swath of presidential appointments confirmed, never publicly endorsed Scott’s leadership bid or spoke on it. However, those close to Trump, like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, made clear the MAGA movement wanted Scott in the position.
The secret ballot voting process means we’ll likely never know for certain how each senator voted. Some shared their stance ahead of the vote, however, with Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) each endorsing Scott.
