Why Trump’s MAGA base wants Rick Scott for Republican Senate majority leader over his rivals.

Having taken the presidency last week in convincing fashion and having long possessed House Republicans by the throat, the MAGA movement this week turns its eyes to the Senate. On Wednesday, the incoming Senate GOP majority will elect a new leader for the first time in 18 years. The race, between Sens. John Thune, John Cornyn, and Rick Scott, intensified over the weekend as President-elect Donald Trump’s win reverberated through the caucus—and Trump’s most ardent MAGA supporters attempted to bully Republican senators into submission.

At the risk of overgeneralizing, let’s break the three senators into two camps. On one side we have the two Johns. (A third John—Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming—has the contest to be the next majority whip locked up.) We might describe both Thune and Cornyn as “legacy GOP.” Both have served under the current leader, Mitch McConnell, as his whip. Both are conservative, but neither is a tear-it-all-down guy. They’re open to dealmaking with Democrats under the right conditions and aren’t recklessly gung-ho about threatening government shutdowns or debt defaults. Unlike McConnell, neither has been a regular critic of Donald Trump, but they have had their moments. And yes, Trump did take note of those moments.

Scott, who just won his second term in the Senate after serving two terms as Florida’s governor, represents what we might call the Senate Freedom Caucus. These are the minority of further-right members, like Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and others, who’ve rejected McConnell’s leadership as averse to the wishes of the Republican base and too accommodating to Democrats. (Yes, Mitch McConnell, who perfected obstructionism as a political strategy in the Obama years, is now criticized as spineless.) Scott and McConnell loathe each other, stemming back to Scott’s tenure atop the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the 2022 midterm cycle. McConnell attributed the Senate GOP’s poor performance that year to candidate recruitment and other mistakes Scott made, such as his genius idea to release a policy platform that, among other things, would’ve technically led to the expiration of Social Security and Medicare. Scott argued that McConnell’s leadership in that Congress, when a raft of bipartisan legislation was passed, muddled Republicans’ campaign messaging. Scott challenged McConnell for leader two years ago and was put in his place by a 37-to-10 vote.

Scott’s camp, in other words, is the smaller one, and he’s not particularly popular among his Republican colleagues. Under neutral circumstances in a one-on-one vote with either Cornyn or Thune, he’d probably lose. There was always a scenario, though, in which that could change: Trump would win the election and use his newfound capital to endorse Scott and impose his will on the chamber.

Trump has not, as of this writing, endorsed Scott or either John. We’ll get into the why of that shortly. But Trump loyalists have certainly tried to spend Trump’s newfound capital on Scott.

In an apparently coordinated social media push beginning over the weekend, pro-Trump voices like Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, Charlie Kirk, and others rallied behind Scott as the only acceptable candidate willing to enact Trump’s agenda. Clips of Thune and Cornyn giving off vaguely liberal vibes in the past began recirculating. Some Scott allies in the Senate, including Bill Hagerty, fellow Floridian Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul, began going public with their support, while right-wing influencers leaked supposed internal whip counts (that could be completely, entirely wrong). Since the leadership election is conducted by secret ballot, the play is to publicly expose and pressure those senators into supporting Scott.

This bullying campaign is indicative of why most Republican senators haven’t wanted Scott to lead them in the past. It offends many senators’ sensibilities, and it’s a political misread from a guy who’s asking colleagues to entrust their fates in his political instincts. The race is strictly a popularity contest. Even tacitly encouraging an army of social media trolls to round up the votes may have the opposite effect.

So far—so far—Trump has been obeying wise counsel to stay out of this. Perhaps he could get Scott elected as majority leader on Wednesday if he leaned into it. But if that effort fell short on a secret ballot, he’d suffer an embarrassing setback to his stature just when it’s at a new peak. Besides, he can bend any of the three to his will later on.

In fact: Why would he endorse when he can bend all three to his will right now?

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump posted on Sunday. “Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again. We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!”

Recess appointments—a constitutional power allowing presidents to temporarily fill vacancies “that may happen during the Recess of the Senate”—are something that both parties in the Senate have prevented from happening in recent times by holding “pro forma” sessions every few days instead of actually adjourning for extended periods of time.

Technical aspects aside, it’s notable that Trump’s first instruction to the Senate since winning is that he doesn’t want to deal with the confirmation process. To this order—that the Senate get over its constitutional prerogative to advise on and consent to presidential appointments—we heard from each candidate variations on a refrain we should get used to: Yes, sir, an excellent idea!

Cornyn and Thune do, at least, attempt to hedge. Cornyn notes that the Constitution gives the president the right to make recess appointments but elides how the Senate doesn’t properly “recess” to prevent presidents from doing so. Thune says it’s on the table. Well, good for the table. Scott is the only one who seems desperately eager to let Trump run riot over him and the chamber he would ostensibly lead for the next several years. We’ll find out Wednesday how many Republican senators share that appetite.

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.