Trump Is Fed Up With Senate Republicans. The Feeling Is Mutual.

A disconnect is growing between President Donald Trump and Senate Republican leaders as the president grows increasingly frustrated with what he views as stagnation on his top priorities – and on the other side, senators miffed as they struggle with a month of tumult.

Trump has torpedoed what appeared to be nearly done deals, including most recently yanking his director of national intelligence nominee Jay Clayton from a fast-tracked confirmation hearing and hobbling an extension of a foreign intelligence gathering tool. And the president has primaried sitting senators he viewed as disloyal.

As a result of all the wrenches Trump has thrown, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is left in a lurch, some say, while the South Dakota Republican tries to maintain his slim majority in the upcoming midterms.

“We take two steps forward, but then keep having to check to see if there are any landmines around,” said one source familiar with Trump and Thune’s dynamic.

That puts the Senate in a precarious place, where five months ahead of the midterm elections, the appetite for substantial legislation is already low. In conversations with more than a dozen Republican lawmakers, Senate aides, current and former administration officials and people close to the president, they describe a contentious relationship between the White House and Senate — with no identifiable remedy.

Trump and Thune speak at a steady clip, according to sources familiar with the pair. The conversations are not on a set schedule but ebb and flow depending on whether major Senate business is underway. That is a significant contrast from Trump’s relationship with Speaker Mike Johnson, whom he speaks with far more often.

“Thune tells him what he needs to hear, and Johnson tells him what he wants to hear,” the source familiar with Trump and Thune’s dynamic told NOTUS. “Right now, [Trump’s] in a ‘want to hear’ space.”

However, senators and aides alike have argued that Trump and Thune maintain a cordial relationship despite the recent roller coaster of events. The two last spoke over the weekend before Trump departed for the G7 Summit in France.

And they say that Trump’s frustration is not with the Senate leader personally, but rather the chamber writ large and its arcane procedures.

“Thune just happens to be the majority leader,” a senior White House official told NOTUS. “This is what happens when you’re in the big boy chair.”

The president’s frustrations are centered on the still existing filibuster, the lack of movement on the SAVE America Act, the not-yet-jobless parliamentarian and the “blue slip” procedure that allows home-state senators to block certain judicial nominees.

“He’s a CEO of companies. When you’re CEO of companies, you just say ‘this is what we’re going to do’ and the company does it,” one Senate Republican said. “He gets frustrated with the judges because you can’t tell the judges what to do. He gets frustrated with the legislative branch. Same thing — you can’t compel it. You’ve got to be able to work with people and figure it out.”

Those frustrations seeped out once again as members were leaving for the week on Thursday, with the president lambasting senators who are against nixing the 60-vote threshold as “a FOOL, a very stupid one, at that!”

The White House said Thursday that Trump has “enjoyed working closely with Leader Thune and Senate Republicans to deliver on many important promises to the American people,” on key issues like the tax-cut package passed last summer and funding for Trump’s border security agenda.

“We look forward to continuing these close relationships and fulfilling President Trump’s priorities that Americans elected him to enact,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

For the rank-and-file side, sources told NOTUS that Republican senators feel ignored and disrespected. One person close to Senate leadership said GOP senators are trying to hold together a tight majority but the White House “doesn’t care.”

“There hasn’t been enough of a heads-up when they’re going to do something, particularly the president, but I don’t really know if the president’s staff really knows that he’s going to be doing stuff,” a second Senate Republican said. “We’re looking at these electoral numbers, and we all have to get on the same page here — quickly.”

And as for Thune, he has been left exasperated and irritated by the latest string of events.

A mild-mannered Midwesterner, the Republican leader rarely shows his true colors while being peppered by reporters — until he lets his guard down. That happened on Wednesday morning after Trump derailed his hopes of confirming Clayton and reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by tying a nominee that is likely unconfirmable and the SAVE America voting bill to them, respectively.

When pressed on why Trump is connecting all of these items together, Thune shot back: “Good question.”

Multiple lawmakers who spoke with NOTUS say that Thune’s frustration stems largely from the consistent derailing of the chamber’s agenda and the high-wire act of keeping an increasingly fractured conference united. Prime examples: The president’s “anti-weaponization” fund that almost tanked the second single-party measure that green-lighted border funds and the latest DNI and FISA rug-pullings.

“Thune has about 50 things he wants to get done right now,” the first Senate Republican said. “I think his frustration is when we get stuck in a week and we’re not productive and we’re not able to actually move one of the many things that have got to move.”

Senate Republicans are still unclear on how the opening for director of national intelligence and a FISA extension will get resolved.

James Braid, the White House director of legislative affairs, told Punchbowl News in an interview Thursday that Trump has “a lot of confidence” in the Republican leader, citing the pair’s “shared relationships and a shared sense of accomplishment.” Braid also took issue with the idea that the two are not speaking regularly, saying that “the talking is going on.”

“When the train’s on the track, we can’t take any more stops,” the second Republican lawmaker said. “We’ve just got to keep going.”

Senators have frequently cited Trump’s repeated calls for the SAVE America Act to be attached to key items, including FISA reauthorization or a potential third reconciliation bill —- the latter of which few believe will even happen.

His focus on the voting bill has also grated on members as they make clear that there are not the votes to proceed on it no matter how much the president pushes it. And that’s a reality Trump hasn’t taken kindly to.

“He’s got two speeds: Uninterested and the speed of light,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana). “And on the things that are important to him, he moves at the speed of light.”

The blame for how the Republican-led White House and Republican-led Senate got into this quagmire stretches far and wide.

Lawmakers and aides told NOTUS that they believe that Trump’s advisers don’t have a grasp on the Senate or Congress, citing the ill-timed announcement that Bill Pulte would be the incoming acting DNI — a move that jeopardized renewal of the key spy powers.

Others defended the president. On Pulte, Trump realized that Democrats were playing politics by fast-tracking Clayton and moved in to stop it. But on a larger note, a senior White House official said, it’s because of Trump that many lawmakers on both sides had their seats to begin with and that the legislative wins they tout are a result of the president’s agenda.

“A little bit of humility and recognition of the president’s political instincts” could be required, the senior White House official said. And the quicker members learn that “if you just follow Trump, you’ll win,” the official added, the better off they’ll be.

A former senior Trump advisor told NOTUS that the president does know how to count the votes, but he also believes that he can get more out of the body with additional pressure.

“[Trump] thinks he can twist, go one more step to get one more thing. He got everyone to move on this, and then he’s like, ‘Oh, well, maybe I can get another bite at this apple and get them to approve the Save America Act,’” the ex-advisor said of the latest DNI kerfuffle.

“I think this is an example of where he just took one step too many,” they added.