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FIRST ON FOX: Some Senate Republicans worry that their secret weapon on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump, isn’t making a strong enough case to voters that there needs to be more Republicans in the upper chamber.
There are only a handful of primary races left between now and November, when the balance of power in the Senate could slip from the GOP’s grasp, with several seats on the line and Senate Democrats hungry to regain control.
And there’s a major issue bogging Republicans down that has spurred internal animosity: the SAVE America Act. Trump’s pressure to pass the election integrity measure and his tendency to bash Republicans for not getting it done has placed vulnerable incumbents in between a rock and a hard place.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told Fox News Digital in an interview that while some Republicans are making promises to voters that the bill could pass right now, the better tact would be to push why more Republicans are needed in the Senate.
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“The president made the argument, ‘Well, pass the Save America Act, it will motivate our base,’” Thune said. “Yeah, but I think the base can be plenty motivated by other issues, and particularly by the president getting out there on the campaign trail and telling them why it’s important that they elect Republicans to the Senate.”
“Everybody has their own ideas about how best to communicate our message, but I think our message between now and November ought to be why the Democrats are completely out of step with the American people and why we need to elect more Republicans so we can do things like the SAVE America Act,” he continued.
Anxious Republicans hope to see a shift in messaging from shooting inward at their own to turning their fire on Democrats, who themselves are undergoing a messy ideological change on the campaign trail. Republicans see prime messaging targets with candidates like Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota pushing left-leaning policies.
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But the SAVE America Act has consumed much of the oxygen heading into the penultimate stretch of the election cycle.
The legislation has produced an online dogma that punishes any Republican, including Thune, who tries to convey the political reality in the Senate that Democrats continue to block the bill, and there just aren’t enough Republican votes to pass it as is.
It’s caused private disagreements to take a new life on social media, where proponents, like Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, are sniping at their colleagues for the bill’s failure to launch, despite five attempts at trying to pass it throughout the year in various iterations.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee (NRSC), warned that division would sow disaster for the GOP heading into November.
“There’s no doubt that the road to socialism runs right through a divided Republican Party,” Scott told Fox News Digital. “I hope every American understands that, remembers that, and hears it several times between now and Election Day.”
And with a Senate midterm map with more vulnerable Republicans in play than Democrats, it will be a difficult task for the GOP to maintain and grow their thin, 53-seat majority in the upper chamber.
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Republicans know that Trump will be the key to motivating their base, just as he’s motivated voters in years past, and some hope he’ll stop dragging Republicans through the mud. Thune isn’t the only one that wants to see Trump push more on the road.
Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., reportedly questioned members of Trump’s political operation during a closed-door meeting last week on when the president would start attacking Democrats instead of members of his own party.
Daines, who helmed the Senate GOP’s campaign arm before Scott in 2024 when they flipped the upper chamber, told Fox News Digital that Trump would be “one of the most important voices in the 2026 election.”
He contended that Trump would be a powerful influence on showing the contrast between “common sense versus crazy” that’s been developing in the Democratic Party.
“We’re seeing the Democrats are just running so far to the left that it’s frightening where the center of gravity is now a Democrat Party,” Daines said. “And this has been one of the more compelling arguments for ‘26, and the president can make that as well as anybody.”
When pressed on Trump’s involvement on the campaign trail, Daines noted that midterm election cycles tend to boil down to complacency versus motivation.
“I think he’s a very important voice here, because in midterm elections, it’s about turning out your base. In midterm elections, the party that’s not in power tends to be angry, and they’re motivated, and they do vote,” Daines said. “The party that is in powers base tends to be a bit more complacent. We’ve got to get our happy, complacent Republican voters out to the polls, because we cannot allow Democrats to take control.”
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Meanwhile, Thune said, “Why not turn [the SAVE America Act] into a campaign issue,” and argued that the key to winning out this cycle will be independent voters who aren’t moored to either party.
But the Beltway issues, like nuking the filibuster and squabbling over legislation that has stalled since March, aren’t helping make the case to those voters, for now, that Republicans should be in charge.
“If you look at Maine, in North Carolina, in Ohio, in Iowa, in Alaska, you know, it’s the Indy voters, it is the middle of the electorate, and we are not talking to them when we are arguing with each other over whether or not to eliminate the filibuster,” Thune said.
“I mean, that’s just not an issue that’s going to win the hearts and minds of the American people in November,” he continued. “So, I’d turn my fire on the Democrats, attack them for being against something that is fundamentally straightforward, simple to understand for the American people, and realize that the best way to get the SAVE Act across the finish line is to elect more Republican senators.”
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