Donald Trump is publicly blaming Sen. John Cornyn and GOP strategist Karl Rove if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton loses to Democrat James Talarico — and the fight over who controls Republican nominee selection is now out in the open.
This is not just about one Senate seat. It is about whether Republican voters pick their candidates or whether the permanent consulting class does. Karl Rove has been a fixture of that class for decades — the man behind the curtain of Bush-era GOP politics, now working to undermine a Trump-endorsed candidate in a state the president carried by nearly 14 points in 2024.
Trump endorsed Paxton over incumbent Cornyn in the GOP primary. Now recent polls show Talarico with a slight edge over Paxton in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in 38 years. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted its forecast from "lean Republican" to "toss up" in August. CNN data analyst Harry Enten reported that Paxton broke a record as the least popular Texas GOP Senate nominee of the century.
Trump laid the blame directly at the feet of the establishment. "Sadly, and very stupidly, John Cornyn, and his Liddle' Buddy, Super RINO, Karl Rove, are doing everything possible to make it hard for Ken Paxton, the Greatest Attorney General in the History of Texas, and one of the Best in the United States, to win the upcoming Midterm Election against a Radical Left Lunatic, James TalaFREAKO, who is the ANTITHESIS of Texas Values," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
He added: "If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career."
Trump carried Texas in 2024 with 56.2% of the vote to Kamala Harris's 42.4%, according to CBS News. The last Texas Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate was Lloyd Bentsen, who served from 1970 to 1993. A state that red should not be in play — and the fact that it is raises questions about who the GOP machine is actually serving.
MLive framed the story around Trump "preparing for Paxton to lose" and highlighted Paxton's "mounting controversies." The Guardian, in its live coverage, barely engaged with the Texas race at all, focusing instead on Trump's Georgia rally and fact-checking his claims about the Saudi king.
What neither outlet explored: the money trail behind Cornyn and the Rove network. Rove has spent decades channeling donor money through super PACs and consulting firms to shape Republican primaries. Cornyn, as a five-term incumbent, sits on the Appropriations Committee and has built a donor network that overlaps with the lobbying class that profits from bipartisan deal-making. That is the machine Paxton ran against in the primary — and it is the machine that may now be content to sit on its hands while a Democrat takes the seat.
Trump is calling on Cornyn's supporters to "UNITE, and immediately switch your support to Ken Paxton." Whether they will is an open question. What is not: if Paxton loses, the consultant class wins — and Republican voters in Texas will have to reckon with who actually picks their candidates.
