Top Republican stuck managing pack of 'idiots' and 'lunatics': Rick Wilson

Senate Majority Leader John Thune arrives for President Donald Trump's State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., February 24, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

Senate Majority Leader John Thune could very well be at his wit's end, per conservative commentator Rick Wilson, as President Trump has saddled him with the job of managing a caucus full of "idiots" and "lunatics," and a midterm cycle that keeps "falling apart."

Wilson is a former Republican political strategist and operative, who has emerged in the last decade as a prolific conservative critic of Trump and the MAGA movement, helping to cofound The Lincoln Project. On Monday, he appeared as a guest on the latest episode of the "Fast Politics" podcast with host Molly Jong-Fast, where he discussed and dissected the many developments surrounding the president in the last week.

Chief among those developments was the unprecedented GOP midterm convention, where Trump made himself the center of attention at a time when voters are increasingly sick of him. Jong-Fast made particular note of Trump's baffling promise to send $5,000 checks to every American adult should the GOP keep the House and Senate in November, something that was almost immediately dodged by Thune when journalists pressed him about the possibility.

"Tell me what is happening in John Thune's brain right now," she asked Wilson, he was acquainted with the South Dakota senator during the pre-Trump days.

"'Dear Lord, let the sweet meteor of death plunge to earth and take me now,' is what is going through his brain," Wilson responded, to which Jong-Fast added that he must be "so f—— pissed."

He continued: "Listen, I know Thune from the before times... He was a conservative, but he was never a crazy. He was never on the fringe. He was a classical Reagan/Bush conservative. Not a lunatic, right? Now he's been given the impossible assignment of handling a group of lunatics inside his caucus. If you wake up in the morning, you've got to deal with Cynthia Lummis and Tommy Tuberville and Ted Cruz and all these other idiots."

Wilson added that Thune has spent an "enormous amount of political capital trying to arrange races this year" to try and maintain the GOP's Senate majority, something that is no longer seen as a guarantee, with the party dragged down by Trump and Democrats gaining momentum.

"Why? Because of Donald Trump," Wilson argued. "They thought in Iowa, 'Ashley Hinson, what a safe bet. Blonde, Republican, she'll be fine. No, it's not a big deal.' And yet that campaign is falling apart on them because of Trump. And Maine, Susan Collins, if Donald Trump's name was Donald Smith and he was a semi-regular Republican, Susan Collins would win by 20 points. Not going to happen."

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