…And just like that, President Trump opens the door of possibility for a special election, and John Thune to fulfill Kimberly’s hope returning to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, with a full-throated gubernatorial endorsement from the Great MAGA King. But I’ll get to that in a moment….
First, President Trump has announced his nomination of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Keeping in mind that Tom Homan is already assigned the one task that Governor Noem would not like to be responsible for, controlling the border and deporting illegal aliens. Both matters are of interest to the Big Ag industry back home.
So, with a streamlined responsibility portfolio, at DHS Noem would be more focused on national security matters that are not tied to border security. The types of national security issues that Noem has a tendency to frame around constitutional freedoms, liberties, and the removal of systems that directly restrict the rights of Americans. Something, shall we say, directly in her wheelhouse.
Simultaneously, this appointment opens the door for Senator John Thune to return to South Dakota and run for Governor. This possibility directly fits into the wish list of his wife Kimberly Thune, together they have grandkids now. The family dynamic caused Senator Thune to seriously contemplate retiring two-years ago.
From 2021 – “during a casual discussion at Crossroads Book & Music, a Sioux Falls store that sells Christian books and items, he seemed weary. If he runs and wins, he noted, it means a six-year commitment. [Thune] said his wife Kimberley wants him to come home. “She is done with it,” Thune said.
At the time Thune seriously was thinking about retiring, the opportunity for Senate Leadership was just as well-known as it is today. As we sit here on the eve of the Senate leadership vote, perhaps a discussion with President Trump about helping Thune return to Sioux Falls for a run at the governorship would fulfill an objective on many levels.
Noem’s early exit could create a special election, and with a full-throated Trump endorsement, Thune would be a shoo-in despite some opposition from the grassroots. Perhaps an insurance MAGA rally or two on Thune’s behalf would be too good to pass up.
Now we enter the real chess game. With Rubio removed from SSCI Chair, there’s an opening for a senior member of the Senate Intel Committee to assume that pretty cushy and important Gang of Eight job.
John Cornyn is a senior member of that SSCI committee, who also happens to be running for Senate Majority Leader.
If Thunes take the carrot of South Dakota Governor, and Cornyn takes the consolation carrot of SSCI Chairman, who does that leave for Senate Leader?
.
lol.. nah. Couldn’t be.. nah, wait… hmmmm. lol
Toodles.
Actually, I think the Lt. Governor, Larry Rhoden, would move up to governor and fill out the term until the 2026 election, instead of there being a special election.
Thune’s SD residence might be Sioux Falls, but if Thune were governor, he’d be expected to live in the state capital, Pierre, SD, out on the Missouri River.
Pierre is a lot closer to Sioux Falls than DC, just a stone’s throw down the road on the South Dakota prairie, and a lot less nuts.
Have you ever driven from Sioux Falls to Pierre? It’s not a stone’s throw, although distances on the prairie go more quickly when you’re doing 75-80 in the interstate. Once you get off the interstate, you have to drive about an hour to get to Pierre.
But, yes, Pierre is definitely less nuts.
its still desolate even though its only 3 hours from civilization. Kimberlys home is SF. I’m hoping she just wants to stay home and live a normal life
I hope Thune gets run over by a truck on an interstate highway.
Correct. Rhoden becomes governor.
Perhaps Rhoden could find a leadership role in the Trump admin?
Maybe she could have a word or two with the sharpshooters at Homeland Special Investigations.
Preferably “You have the right to remain silent…”
Chess
Poor Dems: That damn misogynist Trump has appointed more women to high positions of consequential power than Unca Joe ever did.
REAL women too; not the “identify as” type women!
This morning I heard the exciting news that the first openly-tranny Representative has been elected. Yes, Democrat. From Delaware. What I found most bizarre is that the reporter stressed “openly”. 😀
Along these lines, I keep hoping Trump will tag Rubio for a job and allow us to have a new (praying better) Senator. Once in new position if he does not MAGA the line he is fired!
Otherwise, Florida seems to be stuck with this RINO.
Byron Donalds is my dream senator… also maybe Matt Gaetz?
Matt is my representative and it would be heartbreaking to lose him, but if he goes to the Senate in place of Rubio it is worth the sacrifice. Imagine him going up to Thune and asking how Kevin McCarthy is doing these days. 🤣
How about if he becomes AG?
Wow. Nostradamus much..??!
Yes, pull Matt Gaetz from the House and move him to the Senate! That’s probably his next stepping stone to Governor unless he would consider that a step down.
Gaetz is awesome.
I hate to put the poltroon in a position of power. He’s already done irreparable damage in his role on the Senate Intel Committee, but maybe he could be made Ambassador to Yemen.
But yes, moving him out of the Senate would give us Floridians a chance at an infinitely better Senator.
Perfect choice. Someone who fully understands DHS has been a tool for the abuse of power for decades and will be eliminated. (hopes & prayers.)
DHS, Patriot Act and TSA – Bush’s biggest mistakes.
Perhaps Bush’s Patriot Act was actually American conservatives “biggest mistake”.
At least I prefer to view American citizens as being the ones who actually possess agency over what happens, even if they didn’t recognize it at the time.
Bottom line, thank God for DJT and the Great Awakening he first called for in 2017 during one of his rare formal White House addresses.
And thank God so many Americans have heeded his calls to Wake Up, Savvy Up and start becoming effectively involved rather than expecting Government Daddy Strangers to take care of things while they zone out.
Rush Limbaugh was its most prominent cheerleader. They really should have let Harry Reid kill the act as he claimed he had.
Rush also wanted to turn our ports over to the muslims because bath house G. bush told him so. i think Rush finally figured out towards the end tho. miss him.
I see you make up your own facts. Laughable.
Unbelievable, though, that SO MANY Americans have remained oblivious to the value of PJDT. Hard to put my mind around that fact.
At the time I fell for the Patriot Act with the timing and all. “We have to fight Islam wherever we find it”
Oddly, my wife, much less ‘hard-core’ than I and my best friend, told us both it was a huge mistake.
She likes to remind me of that now and then…
was not a mistake, he new what he was doing, set it up for his bath house brother barry.
5D chess is back, baby!
That 4 D chess is in play, lol.
Having personally dealt with the dynamics in Rubio’s district, he was embedded in that district deeper than a tick on a bloodhound. The only way to get rid of him was if he goes willingly.
It’s the same move he did with Nikki Haley. Now she’s politically irrelevant.
The Communist Democrats have had decades to infiltrate the SD. They’ll destroy Rubio. He’ll be a contagion that they’ll imprison and render completely impotent.
That’s akin to pitting the Deep State against the Communists in a mud pit. Who cares who wins, as long as they destroy each other.
Where’s Rick Grenell going to surface? As ‘REX Tillerson’ showed, its gonna take more than bean bag to drain Foggy Bottom…
Kristi Noem shot her dog for no good reason. What kind of person does that
Rural Americans.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/26/politics/kristi-noem-south-dakota-book-killing-dog/index.html
The good reason is that if you cannot trust an animal to NOT TURN ON YOU TO DO YOU BODILY HARM, you cannot even put it up for adoption nor turn it loose into the wild for it will continue to do the same.
In Rural America, this was known as a humane thing to do, especially if you believe that animals also have the breath of life in them and that their soul will also go to heaven….where they will have a better existence.
Becoming an urban nation is depriving us of these realities of life.
Even in urban areas, if a dog bites someone…..the Police or Animal Control are going to take the dog from its home and put it down for the very same reasons listed above.
We can change our lifestyles to urbanism be we cannot change the natural world.
…once a dog kills a chicken, they have tasted blood and will never be safe around livestock. Been there…
Once a cat poops on your dining room table, you can’t stop that either. I found out this morning.
Or keeps peeing under it…
Ha ha ha ha!!!
You have to be a little more cunning with your solutions when it comes to cats. You train dogs you outwit cats. 🙂
Lemon or orange smelling furniture polish worked for me to keep them from scratching wood furniture legs so should keep them off a table and you’d better make sure that litter box is easily available and kept cleaned out.
my cat was easier than my puppy
We have a loved male cat who totally understands the “NO” word. Early training (like for a child) works!
He regularly asks to go outside to ‘do his duty’. He is seventeen, so is allowed to be inside much more in inclement weather, but is outside at least several hours each day (or night). Very ‘country’ here, and he is VERY cautious before he ventures any distance from the house.
use natures miracle takes the smells out of pet droppings so they do not reuse the spot. good on hard surfaces and most fabrics
Exactly. My family has had animals of some sort for over 30 years including the last 20 with at least 2 dogs up till the present. My dogs sleep with us. But if they become dangerous I’ll put them down in a heartbeat.
I don’t love them more than my wife and kids.
BTW, in a suburban neighborhood, a dog biting another person is a massive lawsuit waiting to happen.
You’re going to get sued and lose, then not be able to get homeowners insurance.
When we merged households my husbands dog became increasingly aggressive..I was warned by the Humane Society that aggression increases and that the dog could kill the bigger lab..sure enough the dog attacked me, my husband was livid and I took the dog to the Humane society. I ended up almost losing my hand and sadly, the dog was put down. It was a painful, emotional lesson to learn, we never talk about it..I don’t like the way Kristy narrated the event in the book but she was right.
The kind who will command respect and obedience to lawful orders…or else!
I’d say the safety of her small children was a good enough reason to shoot her dog.
It was a rescue dog that they tried to save.
It attacked livestock, and it attacked Kristi.
She had small children at the time, they lived out on a ranch and had a dog that was untrainable.
Was there a dog pound close-by where she could take the dog so they’d kill it for her? ‘Cause that’s what they would have done with a dog that had attacked livestock and appeared dangerous to humans.
But Kristi made the tough choice of killing the dog herself.
Years ago a rabid dog was traveling through our neighborhood, a neighborhood with lots of small children, including me and my four sisters.
People were outside yelling at each other to get inside.
My dad, a marvelous father, was able to get the rabid dog inside our fenced backyard, and then kill it with a whack to the head with a shovel.
Protecting people means you sometimes have to kill animals.
I understood Kristi’s actions with the dog. What upset me was her totally tone deaf explanation of what happened by saying it prepared her for hard decisions. For those people who agreed she did the right thing it seemed kinda ridiculous, for those who disagreed it just added fuel to the fire. If she hadn’t written about it I wonder if it would have ever come up at all.
You are forgetting the desire of the newshounds to find something/anything that they classify as ‘dirt’.
How was her explanation tone deaf?
Sometimes situations are described as they happened, without any fanfare or without any emotions attached.
That’s what Kristi did. She just said what happened and how, eventually, having to do that hard thing helped prepare her for many more hard decisions she would have to make later on.
I am often accused of showing no sympathy when I describe something that happened. It is not that I have no feelings or emotions for what did happen, but I like to think of myself as an old timey pioneer woman who has no time for foolish over-sentimentalism. You do what needs to be done and then go back to work.
And if tears do come for what happened, it will be in the dead of night when the work is done and your household is at peace.
“for no good reason” == an opinion; an opinion that’s obviously NOT shared by everyone.
Perhaps consider focusing emotional attention on the very real current plight of the cats and dogs being threatened by illegal immigration and on the plight of beloved pets, like P’Nut and Fred, who are being killed by heartless government bureaucrats?
City dwellers and those who think all dogs are smart, wonderful creatures in spite of proof that isn’t always the case will always say thing like this.
The kind that does not put up with dangerous animals that like to kill your chickens.
If only……..
I have been wondering. I knew there had to be reasons. X is alive with the professional political amatures criticism of some of these picks. It makes me laugh. Soooo many opinions, yawn. Thank you for the clarification! Makes sense I love it. Now do Gabbard and Rubio if you have a thought. This one perplexes me. I know there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye.
Why would Cornyn want SSCI chairmanship over being Supreme Leader? Maybe he is that stupid.
My bet: Scott not crossing the finish line.
I can see Mitch twisting testicles to spite PDJT. He is that self important.
Why would the Lt. Governor be refused his right to succeed into the Governorship of South Dakota?
Isn’t that the main purpose of such an office – like VP?
The God-fearing LG is certainly going to be beneficial to the state rather than Thune, a sell-out made in the image of Mitch O’Connell.
Lots of maneuvering around the law and possible lawfare + lies for this to happen.
Cannot find any information about using a Special Election to replace Noem.
Cannot find any information about using a Special Election to replace Noem.
Neither can I.
He just assumes the position and then has to run in the primary with johnson and/or thune
I hope you are correct! We’ll know very soon.
But but what about her dog….🦴 Now that subject can hopefully remain changed. Doing the DHS thing can set her up to run for Pres in 2028.
I’d rather see the Department of Homeland Security De funded.
And Cornyn at SSCI?
Of all the positions in DC, isn’t SSCI the one where we need a non-criminal the most?
Don’t stop there! Develop the Rubio idea!!!! Putting Rubio in the cabinet gets him out of the senate. Now Desantis can show some good faith by appointing a Conservative to replace Rubio. Then when Rubio (just another Pretty Rino Boy) doesn’t produce as DJT expects he is FIRED! GONE!
So, tell me DJT hasn’t had some good “thinkers” doing advance planning!
had the same thoughts
Rick Scott eliminated in first round…Thune is in.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/senate/3228120/thune-cornyn-mcconnell-senate-gop-leader-election/
So much for the Noem/Thune strategy.
The US Senate is largely populated by moderate/liberal members who hate their conservative base. I hope it doesn’t happen, but with Thune DJT may be confronted by a continuation of the uniparty.
“may be”??
Ratcliffe interrogating Strok – it’s priceless
RE: his F— Trump texts
Draw and quarter Strzok is the answer for what punishment he deserves.
oh dear God, no. As a lifelong SD resident I am praying Larry Rhoden wants the job but you’re right, we here in SD are so stupid we would clap like trained seals. Unfortunately, its his if he wants it. Maybe Kimberly doesnt want to live in desolation in Pierre either
Not just my opinion but Rhoden is a hot tempered mess and not just privately
That may be but which is worse….thune, johnson or Rhoden?
Articles like this is why I come here.
I remember back in 2021 when I was so glad to be moving to South Dakota where they were Red with one of the best Conservative Governors in America. Many many of the Treepers kept warning me over and over until I said at 73 it was my mistake to make so leave me alone. About 4 months after my move in 2022 I apologized to all of the Treepers on here because YES they were right.
Now Thune is. the new majority leader and Noem of all people has been nominated Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary. Noem who has taken credit for all the things that the South Dakota Senate and House either stopped her from doing or did without her approval. Noem who was bigger part of the Eastern South Dakota land grab for the dangerous CO2 pipelines than most from out of the state realize.
I read and re-read Sundance’s post about Trump possible scheme. However as much as I trust Sundance that scheme was way way too elaborate with too many mismatch pieces for the pieces to even halfway fit except by some miracle. Oh, it just could happen BUT???
Just my opinion since Trump has not even been sworn in yet, but I do believe Trump is making some or many of the same mistakes he made his first term. Trump’s picks of people his last term who ended up throwing him under the bus t with a knife in his back when the chips where down. The picks that don’t make the most sense are all the people who have proven that they are NOT loyal to America, much less Trump!!
Just my honest gut feeling. Hey things can’t get any worse or can they—Praying that Trump does turn the tide of America and is able to do some of what he has been saying he will do for over a year this time around. Yes, Trump was loaded down with prosecutions the last time, but who is to say they won’t try and prosecute Trump over and over this term. Hey don’t forget that the new Senate Majority Leader has stated many times that Trump is a traitor, should resign and belongs in jail.
Name some people that are “loyal to America”.
The top people from SD including Noem are only out for themselves.
Not far fetched to imagine some kind of entrapment scheme if Trump decided to support Thune’s return to S. Dakota.
Not as we wish them to be.
National laws against anti-semitism?
Like hate speech?
No thanks.
Sounds like Trump playing 3-D chess.
I would hope that Gov. Noem will ‘jerk a knot in the tail’ of the Secret Service ? Burn it down at the top and start over ! Strip it of it’s DEI and CRT nonsense and return it’s reputation to its’s rightful and honorable position in Gov.