Navarro: 'We're not going to have a Trump Cabinet' with Thune or Cornyn leading Senate GOP

Former White House aide Peter Navarro questioned whether President-elect Trump’s nominees could get confirmed if either Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) or Sen. John Cornyn (R -Texas) is elected as Senate majority leader.

Navarro argued some Trump supporters who have been mentioned as potential Cabinet nominees, such as Kash Patel, a former Defense official in the first Trump administration, would not make it through the confirmation process if Thune or Cornyn were in charge of the Senate.

"If John Thune or John Cornyn get control of the Senate, like Mitch McConnell did, we're not going to have a Trump Cabinet," Navarro said. He also said having one of those men as majority leader threatens the productivity of the Senate in a Trump term.

“There’s 4,000 appointments that have to be fulfilled. A thousand of those are Senate-confirmed ... and four years of Mitch McConnell, who was just the puppeteer for Thune and Cornyn, we didn’t get half of those,” Navarro told NewsNation’s Dan Abrams on Tuesday.

“And it took 100 days to get 80 percent of the Trump Cabinet. Just the secretaries. We didn’t get our deputies, undersecretaries, assistants. And it’s a big deal, Dan,” he fumed.

“So don’t tell me democracy is working when the party that holds the Senate, our party, gets in the way of appointments.”

Navarro has been a staunch advocate for Trump’s reelection and got a roaring reception by the Republican Party for his prime-time speech endorsing Trump for a second term at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee — delivered just hours after his release from prison for refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation.

Senate Republicans will elect a replacement for longtime Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Cornyn, Thune and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) are running for the post.

Navarro argued that regardless of who is selected, they must back “a Trump landslide.”

“The Senate majority leader should be somebody who supports the Trump landslide. Look, the people of America have spoken now,” he told Abrams. “They want an end to inflation, they want secure borders, they want mass deportations, they want all of that. They’re not going to get it if you put p‑‑‑ies in the Cabinet.”