Thune calls Trump's taxpayer-funded ads wrong, lets them keep running anyway.

…(cont) That same Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he likes the ads — likes their promise to 'cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists' — but said they 'shouldn't be paid for by taxpayer dollars,' per The Hill. Thune runs the chamber that appropriates the money the ads run on. Nothing in the wire that day, or since, shows him filing a bill, scheduling a vote, or naming a whip count. The record holds one sentence. It does not hold one number.

Also that Monday, CBS News reported 'bipartisan backlash' against the campaign, per its own segment description. The senator named criticizing it is John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana. The two guests booked to discuss the ads, Doug Heye and Hyma Moore, were there to discuss them; CBS did not report what either one concluded. The word 'bipartisan' and the one Republican name under it sit in the same wire story.

A federal law restricts partisan spending of public money. An ad running under that law has the sitting president vowing to rout the press and describing a battle against 'the sick political class.' The one senator on record by name calling the spending wrong caucuses with the president who is in it. The Majority Leader agrees, on the record, that the money is wrong money. He has not yet found the floor time to say so with a vote. Hon, the floor belongs to him to schedule.