John Thune

speaker

66 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 10 Jul

John Thune’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The NPR Politics Podcast · Where is Mitch McConnell? · 10 Jul 2026 podcast

But what his point is here is that that is not a system. matched

It worked out because there was a doctor who was willing to be candid and a patient willing to receive the advice. matched

But that is not going to happen in most of these cases, and that is a problem. matched

And there's really no good way of dealing with this except for elections. matched

Yeah, I was talking about this earlier this week with Adam Jentleson. matched

He's a former Democratic candidate. matched

Hill staffer who worked for Senator Harry Reid, for Senator John Fetterman, and he says that one of the problems is that lawmakers need to make these decisions while they still can, while they're still in their prime, well before matched

They need to step aside and can no longer do the job. matched

And they often do not do that. matched

And one of the reasons for that is because there are a lot of perks to being a member of Congress, not just the ones you would expect, but perks that are very particular to being helpful as you're getting older. matched

Here's what he told me. matched

Yeah, you've got drivers, you've got catered lunches once a week. matched

Jentlinson told me you have interesting tantalizing topics on intellectual issues, the kinds of events you might see in a senior center, except this case, it is, you know, a hearing or a confirmation for an important issue that you're voting on in Congress. matched

You know, I talked to a political science professor at the University of Louisville, Adam Enders, who studies conspiracy theories. matched

And one of the things he told me is that the reason so many of these have been sparked online around McConnell and around Cain is because there's an element of truthiness to them, as Stephen Colbert used to say, that there's already this public perception that lawmakers are not maybe being fully transparent about their health. matched

And it is not the worst thing in the world for constituents to be monitoring this and asking questions and having a level of skepticism about whether their elected officials are fit to serve. matched

And especially in a really narrowly divided Congress, that can matter when these votes are often decided on the flip of one or two members. matched

Yeah, this is a key state, as you said, in part because it is a state that President Trump won in 2024. matched

But the incumbent is a Democrat. matched

And so this will be key to Democrats goals of trying to retake the Senate. matched

Showing 21–40 of 66 · page 2 of 4