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WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined The Ben Shapiro Show.

On Democrats’ shutdown hypocrisy:

“[T]his is a real losing hand for [Democrats] to play. It’s certainly costing people all over the country, big time, particularly federal employees. And the longer this thing drags on, the worse it gets …

“[Democrats] don’t seem prepared to want to come to their senses and actually do the right thing for the American people, which is to keep the government open.”

[…]

“We ought to be able to … open up the government by just having five more Democrats vote with us … that’s all it’s going to take … Everything is harder than it should be right now because of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I still think at some point there are going to be some rank-and-file Democrats who break with their leadership and do the right thing for the country, and that is open up the government.”

On Democrats’ health care crisis:

“[Democrats] created … this COVID cliff … [T]hese enhanced subsidies, which did go into effect … during the pandemic … was supposed to be a response to that, [and] the pandemic’s long over. [Democrats] created the expiration date. So this is really a problem of their own making.”

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“[E]verything that Obamacare has done, including these enhanced subsidies, has added to the cost of insurance policies. In fact, if you look from 2013 to 2025 to where we are today, insurance rates on … the Obamacare exchanges, have gone up about 221 percent … so it’s done nothing but inflate the cost that people are paying for health insurance across this country …

“[T]he fundamental program is flawed. And then the enhanced subsidies were flawed, too … Insurance companies are incentivized to auto-enroll people, and so it’s become a money maker … just a factory for insurance companies to make money …”

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“Now [Democrats are] expecting Republicans to try and solve it for them. And that’s their price for opening up the federal government. And it’s a price that is a very stiff one, because … to do it the way they want to do it, it’s about $400 billion.”

On preserving the legislative filibuster:

“[The filibuster has] prevented a lot of bad things from happening … The Democrats tried to get rid of the filibuster for what they called their elections reform bill, which basically was consolidating all of elections in Washington, D.C. It would have … taken power to regulate elections away from the states, would have done away with voter ID …”

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“Democrats have made it … clear they would love to get rid of the filibuster to enact their agenda, which includes … statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., and expand the Supreme Court up to 15 seats there, abortion on demand, [and] … federalizing our election system. Those are just a few of the list of horribles that they’ve put out there, and they all campaigned on that …”

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“[Preserving the filibuster is] situational for [Democrats]. It’s all about political power. And … now that they are on the outside, they’re going to use this to their advantage.”

On confirming President Trump’s nominees:

“We cleared the backlog [of nominees]… We’ve been here more days, more hours, cast more votes than any Senate in history, at least the last 40 years, as a result of the Democrats’ obstruction. And so we did make a change in the rules that enables us to start processing some of the executive branch nominations in batches, and that’s enabled us to catch up …”

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“It’s going to be really important for us to continue to fill the judiciary and the executive branch with President Trump’s nominees … to be able to implement the agenda that he ran on and that the American people voted for.”

On the Gaza Peace Deal:

“[I]t is remarkable what the president has accomplished here … [I]t builds on the success … of the Abraham Accords. Obviously, we’re far from being in a state where we can declare total victory, because Hamas is still active, and … they need to be completely obliterated, or at least disarmed, so that they are not a factor in governing the Gaza Strip …”

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“[The peach deal] wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for President Trump and his leadership … [W]e still have a lot of work to do, and Prime Minister Netanyahu and our president, working together with our allies in the region, hopefully will continue to stabilize that area and make it a place that’s attractive for people to live and work and invest.”

On Senate Republicans’ priorities:

“[F]unding the government the old-fashioned way through the appropriations process … There are things like permitting reform … [and] AI, which has become a very, very big issue in our lives … [W]e’ve got to do a farm bill [and] a highway transportation bill. There’s a lot of work for Congress to do that has been put on … the back burner while the government’s been shut down …

“[T]he most important thing that we do is … take care and make sure that we protect the country. I always tell people, if you don’t get national security right, the rest is conversation. So we did get the defense authorization bill across the finish line in the Senate.

“We tried … to put the defense appropriations bill on the floor, which … funds all those priorities, and the Democrats blocked it. But taking care of America’s national security interest in what is a very dangerous world is going to continue to be a big priority for us …”

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“We’ve got to get past this government shutdown and the Democrats holding federal employees hostage … to try and get a bunch of unrelated policy things that they want to get done.

“I’ve said I’m perfectly happy to have the conversation [and] talk with them about some of those things, but … we can’t do that while the government’s being held hostage.”