Trump Picks His Scapegoats Before Texas Votes
President Donald Trump has named the people responsible if Ken Paxton loses Texas. They are Sen. John Cornyn and Karl Rove.
President Donald Trump has named the people responsible if Ken Paxton loses Texas. They are Sen. John Cornyn and Karl Rove. Not Paxton. Not the campaign. Not the candidate’s record.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that Cornyn and Rove were “making it hard for Paxton to beat Talarico.” He added, “If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks” like the two men. That is a convenient arrangement. The verdict arrives before the election, and the guilty parties have already been selected.
Texas should not be a close Senate race, at least not by recent history. The state has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988. In 2024, Trump beat Kamala Harris there by nearly 14 percentage points. Republicans have spent more than $370 million on this Senate contest, nearly $235 million ahead of Democratic spending, according to AdImpact figures cited in recent reporting.
Yet most recent polls show Democratic state Rep. James Talarico ahead of Paxton by single digits. One University of Houston Hobby School poll put Talarico at 50 percent and Paxton at 47 percent. A three-point lead is not a landslide. But it is not the position a party wants in a state it has owned at the Senate level for nearly four decades.
The money did not settle it
More than half a billion dollars has gone into the race across the primary, runoff, and general election, according to AdImpact. Republicans account for $368 million of that total. In September alone, Republican-aligned spending passed $120 million.
That is an extraordinary amount of money to spend on a seat that was supposed to be safe. It suggests the party looked at the polling, looked at Paxton, and decided it had a problem. Trump’s post arrived after that problem became public.
Paxton is not an unknown quantity. He is Texas attorney general, a Trump-endorsed Republican, and the man who defeated Cornyn in the party’s primary. Trump chose him. Trump’s endorsement helped clear the path. Now, if the choice goes badly, the president says the fault belongs to the man Paxton beat and to a strategist who has publicly voiced doubts about Paxton’s chances.
Cornyn lost the primary. He has not endorsed Paxton. Rove has questioned whether Paxton can win and has suggested Cornyn would have been the stronger nominee. Those are political facts. They may matter in a close race. But they are not the whole explanation for a candidate trailing after hundreds of millions in Republican advertising.
Blame is cheaper than a diagnosis
I have watched this move before. A campaign underperforms, the leader names enemies, and the actual weaknesses get filed away. It is easier to blame disloyal Republicans than to ask why a Trump-backed candidate is struggling in Texas.
The uncomfortable question is simple: if Paxton cannot win with Trump’s endorsement, a huge spending advantage, and a Republican-leaning electorate, what exactly would fix the campaign? Trump’s post does not answer that. It changes the subject.
There is also a timing issue. Early voting is near. The polls are tight. The Senate majority may depend on Texas. A public attack on Cornyn and Rove does not obviously bring skeptical Republicans home. It tells them, before they have even voted, that they will carry the loss if Paxton falls short.
That may rally some voters. It may also remind others why the primary fight was bitter in the first place. Cornyn’s supporters spent months making the case that Paxton carried too much baggage. Paxton won anyway. The general election is now testing that argument with a broader electorate.
What is known, and what is not
What is documented is narrow. Trump made the accusation. Cornyn lost the primary to Paxton. Rove has expressed doubt about Paxton. Recent polling shows Talarico with a narrow lead. Republican spending has been enormous.
What is not known is whether Cornyn or Rove will have any measurable effect on the result. Trump offered no specific action by either man that cost Paxton votes. The claim is an accusation, not an audit.
It is also unknown whether the polls are measuring a real shift or a temporary advantage. Texas has embarrassed premature Democratic hopes before. A single-digit lead weeks out is a warning, not a result. Anyone who treats it as settled has forgotten how expensive that mistake can be.
The money says Republicans understand the risk. Trump’s language says they would rather argue about betrayal than confront the candidate. Paxton may still win. Texas has given Democrats few reasons for confidence since 1988.
But if he loses, the postmortem will not begin with Cornyn or Rove. It will begin with the decision to nominate him, endorse him, and then spend $370 million trying to make the arithmetic work.