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U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined “The Story with Martha MacCallum” on Fox News to discuss the Democrats’ latest push to eliminate the legislative filibuster in order to pass a partisan federal takeover of state elections.

 

On President Biden’s bitterly partisan, unpresidential speech in Georgia yesterday:

 

“He's attacking some of his own members. We're not the only ones, Republicans, who are adamantly opposed to what they're trying to do here.

 

“But you know Martha, it is, as Senator McConnell pointed out, profoundly unpresidential. Joe Biden is a better person than that. This was a racially tinged attack and designed nothing more and nothing less than for a political moment. 

 

“He's trying to generate energy among their political base over an issue that, honestly, legislatures all across the country decide every single year. There are always election laws that are being considered.” 

 

On Georgia having more permissive election laws than New York and Delaware:

 

“The laws that are being passed by Georgia have been very mainstream. And to suggest that Georgia is somehow, you know, their legislature, their political process down there, [is] racist because of laws that they passed in many cases that make it easier, easier to vote.

 

“In fact, their laws are much more permissive than some Democrat states like New York, where Senator Schumer's from, or Delaware, where President Biden's from.

 

“So this is just a manufactured crisis designed nothing more than to get a political reaction and to try and generate political pressure on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who they need to break the Senate rules and literally destroy the Senate and, ultimately, dreadfully harm the country.”

 

On Democrats’ attempt to distract from their failed agenda:

 

“Well, I think they're at a loss because nothing else is working. I mean, their economic agenda is taking the country into the ditch.

 

“If you look at inflation, you look at open borders, you look at the defund the police movement in our cities and what's happening there, you look at national security and the disastrous exit from Afghanistan, they are doing anything they can, Martha, to distract from all these other issues.”

 

On voting in America:

 

“This is not an issue that's on the radar screen of the American people. It is easier, not harder to vote in America today than it ever has been before, and evidence of that is the 2020 election. 

 

“I mean, it was a record turnout. We haven't seen that kind of turnout since 1900. And steps that are being [taken] in places like Georgia, with amendments to their election process are simply normal things that state legislatures do on a routine basis. And as I said, in many cases, make it more permissive, not less so for people in Georgia to vote.

 

“And that's the irony about all this, but they are desperate right now, and they're acting like desperate people.”