Karoline Leavitt was supposed to be celebrating her final interview on Fox & Friends as White House press secretary.
Instead, she was cornered over a political crisis Donald Trump helped create, which could end up costing Republicans dearly at November’s midterm election.
The president is heading to Texas on Thursday to attend a fundraiser hoping to boost Ken Paxton, the controversial MAGA Senate candidate he personally backed over incumbent GOP Senator John Cornyn.
Paxton is now locked in a surprisingly tight race with Democrat James Talarico, raising questions about how much he will have to spend—and how heavily he will have to campaign—for Republicans to hold on to the seat.
Asked by Fox host Brian Kilmeade how much Trump was “willing to spend in Texas to try to save Ken Paxton,” Leavitt struggled to answer.
“Well, I don’t have an exact dollar figure for you. I still am a government employee here at the White House today,” she replied.
However, the departing press secretary added that Trump would do what it takes “to ensure Republicans get over the finish line” and would be “out there traversing the country, meeting with everyday Americans and campaigning on behalf of great Republicans across the board.”
Trump is not on the ballot for the midterms in November, when all 435 House seats are up for grabs along with about a third of the Senate’s 100 seats.
But the president has adopted a strategy to make himself the star of the campaign, hoping to get more people to vote.
But GOP insiders have told the Daily Beast that while Trump has traditionally been a “turnout machine” and remains the party’s most recognizable figure, his record-low poll numbers, the affordability crisis, and the unpopular Iran war could end up being a liability for some candidates.
Trump has amassed a massive $400 million war chest through his MAGA Inc super PAC, where Leavitt will now be working after she leaves the White House as one of his “special advisers.”
He reportedly plans to use some of that cash on a series of television ads highlighting the apparent achievements of his second term, although it is not clear how much he is willing to spend, or on whom.
The 80-year-old president will also be the headline act at a two-day midterm convention in Dallas next month, which the Republican National Committee is hoping will help stave off the threat of a Democratic red wave.
But this, too, has also led some Republicans to question the purpose of the convention and how much it will benefit them personally in their own seats.
Texas is a key battleground for Trump, largely because he chose to endorse Paxton over Cornyn, despite his history of felony indictments, an impeachment by his own party, and ongoing accusations of corruption and voter fraud.
The move angered much of the GOP establishment and left Republicans with Paxton, a deeply polarizing candidate, rather than the incumbent senator many viewed as the safer general-election choice.
Recent polling shows Talarico with a narrow but consistent edge over his MAGA opponent. The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project survey put Talarico ahead 42 percent to Paxton’s 39 percent.
Other recent polls have shown Talarico leading by between two and four points, while Emerson had Paxton up by one. The Cook Political Report has moved the race from “Lean Republican” to “Toss-up.”
The financial gap is even more brutal. Talarico has spent more than $25 million on advertising since the general election began, according to AdImpact, while Paxton spent just $119,000 over the comparable period.
According to recent federal filings, Talarico has raised more than $70 million, more than any non-incumbent Senate candidate this election cycle, and nearly $22 million in cash on hand, compared with Paxton’s roughly $2 million.
Trump will front an RNC fundraiser in Houston tonight, before heading to the Johnson Space Center with NASA, where he will award the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the Artemis II crew.
