{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=E4215563-FBEF-40A4-A6DF-BB02516996B5", "Thune Joins \u201cFull Court Press\u201d with Greta Van Susteren", "2020-10-26", "2020", "2020-10", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today joined \u201cFull Court Press\u201d with host Greta Van Susteren to discuss the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping the Senate majority, court-packing, affordable health care, and affordable energy, among other topics.\n\nThune also spoke on the Senate floor about Judge Amy Coney Barrett\u2019s nomination to the Supreme Court and her outstanding experience and qualifications.\n\nOn helping to slow the spread of COVID:\n\n\u201cI would argue that we need to continue to abide by and follow and implement the CDC guidelines when it comes to masks and social distancing. The medical treatment part of this is going to continue to improve. But at least for the foreseeable future, people have to take the steps, the cautions that are advised by the CDC, and do their very best from spreading it\u2026\u201d\n\nOn keeping the Senate majority:\n\n\u201cI believe we will win. I think our candidates are trending in right direction, and, you know, but obviously we have some really hard seats to defend in states in the country where the Republicans traditionally don\u2019t do that well. And obviously the better the president performs, the more it helps our down-ballot races, specifically with the United States Senate where I would argue we are the firewall against a lot of these radical ideas. I think if for whatever reason we lose the presidential race, we definitely need to keep the majority in the Senate to prevent what I think would be some really bad things from happening, to include the Democrats doing away with the legislative filibuster and trying to expand the Supreme Court.\u201d\n\nOn court-packing:\n\n\u201cI think that there are cooler heads over there. I hope they prevail, but I also know how much pressure they\u2019ll have from their far left. They believe \u2013 Chuck Schumer, the Democrat leader of the Senate, he\u2019s looking over his shoulder at AOC on a daily basis. There\u2019s a lot of talk about a primary election perhaps for his seat in New York, and they have, they bring a lot of pressure, I think on these Democrat senators, from the left, from the progressives in their party to take some of these radical steps. I hope that doesn\u2019t happen. Even Justice Ginsberg said at the time she thought nine was the right number. It\u2019s been nine since 1869. I think expanding the court, trying to politicize it, is the wrong thing to do for the country, and obviously, I hope that irrespective of what happens in the election and the aftermath of it, that that won\u2019t be a path that they will choose to go down.\u201d\n\nOn election interference and big tech:\n\n\u201cA lot of misinformation, you know, then a story gets picked up, it goes viral, and \u2013 the defense secretary used to say that \u2018a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on,\u2019 and I think that\u2019s what you\u2019re dealing with in terms of a lot of this social media stuff that comes from these countries. They\u2019re trying to get misinformation and disruption into our election system, and I think that the platforms have a lot to do with trying to prevent that from happening. We\u2019re going to have them in next week for some of these issues. Facebook, Google, Twitter are some of the biggest targets of these foreign countries that want to interfere with American elections, and it\u2019s important to hear from them on the steps that they\u2019re taking to prevent that. But it is critical that this is an issue that we focus on because we have to have confidence and trust in this country in the democratic form of this government is that it\u2019s fair and accurate, and clean elections.\u201d\n\nOn affordable health care:\n\n\u201cI think it has to do, in our view, at least, with creating a competitive model \u2013 where you have more competition out there. That tends to drive down prices, and the one thing that Obamacare did is it basically defined in law what health insurance has to be. \u2026 But I think what Republicans want to see is a competitive, vibrant health care market where people have choices and where companies that are competing for their business to \u2013 in order to get their business, have to bring their prices down.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think the other thing that Republicans want to see is transparency. I mean I think one thing you want to have in health care today \u2013 you don\u2019t know how much things cost. Most markets, a competitive market, at least, you know what things cost. And you know, pricing is transparent, and that\u2019s something that isn\u2019t true in health care. So we would clearly like to see that as well. I think there are good ideas out there from many of our members [who] have introduced bills. But in the end, instead of having government-run programs where the government tells you what you can get, where you can get it, what it\u2019s going to cost you, the best way to get prices down \u2013 and I think that\u2019s where most people \u2013 it\u2019s affordability is the issue that they care most about.\u201d\n\nOn affordable energy:\n\n\u201c[P]articularly those who represent, like me who represent biofuel states, we want to see more biofuels in the fuel mix in this country. And there\u2019s always this view that some industries that get subsidized more than others \u2013 and that they always come after support for ethanol \u2013 but the oil industry also benefits a lot from some of the same sorts of government assistance.\n\n\u201cSo, I guess what I would simply say is I\u2019m all in favor of looking for renewable sources of energy that lessen the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are going out into the atmosphere. I think we all ought to be for that. But realizing in making that transition, you\u2019re going to have a need for a long foreseeable future for oil and gas and some of the more traditional sources of energy. And I think that what the former Vice President \u2026 suggested is that he wants to get rid of that, and it\u2019s consistent with what they want in the Green New Deal, via mandate, via government fiat, is the goal is to incentivizing those things. And I think there\u2019s a very big difference between these things \u2013 these two people are approaching affordable energy for the country.\u201d\n\nOn Judge Barrett\u2019s nomination to the Supreme Court:", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-06-28T00:34:36Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=E4215563-FBEF-40A4-A6DF-BB02516996B5"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6018201131373644, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}