President Donald Trump, 79, has kept his cards close to his chest when it comes to endorsing a candidate in the upcoming GOP runoff in Texas.
The president has apparently been asking everyone he can what they think of incumbent Senator John Cornyn and his rival, disgraced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Trump recently admitted that his “base is with Paxton,” sources told The Washington Post.
For months, Trump has been split between the Republican establishment and his MAGA base when it comes to the Texas race. While it seemed that Trump would back Cornyn, who GOP leaders believe is more electable than Paxton, the commander in chief has been hesitant to go against MAGA, which may be like kicking a hornets’ nest.
Matt Mackowiak, senior adviser to the Cornyn campaign, emphasized the senator’s alignment with the president in a statement to the Daily Beast.
“Sen. Cornyn has voted with President Trump 99.3 percent of the time he’s been in office,” Mackowiak said in an email. “He’s voted for every single Trump nominee, and helped deliver three new Supreme Court Justices. He was the Senate Majority Whip, responsible for counting votes, in the first term. And he’s the strongest GOP nominee in the general election, which will help the GOP pick up five new House seats. We have a plan to win the runoff and we are executing it.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House and Paxton’s representatives for comment.
Trump has been at odds with his base at various points since the start of his second term. In addition to disagreeing about military intervention in Iran, which contradicts his America-first promises, the president has also clashed with MAGA over the release of the Epstein files.
MAGA support for Paxton has put the president in a bind, as the attorney general’s trail of scandals has called his electability into question. Paxton had been impeached by the Texas House for corruption, with one allegation stating he requested $3.3 million in state funds to settle a whistleblower lawsuit filed by former employees. He was later acquitted by the State Senate, allowing him to maintain his position as AG.
Additionally, Paxton was criticized for having an affair with a married mother of seven. In the run-up to the Republican primary, Cornyn ran ads attacking Paxton as a “crooked homewrecker.”
Paxton defied Trump by saying that he would only drop out of the GOP runoff if the president’s beloved SAVE Act, which would impose restrictive voting requirements, passed through the Senate. The SAVE Act has been blocked by a Democratic filibuster, prompting the president and his allies to push to get rid of it. Cornyn, a longtime defender of the filibuster, had offered to sacrifice his support for it in order to get Trump’s law through.
Trump promised on March 6 that he would make a decision soon, but he has not yet done so. He said on Truth Social at the time that he would be “asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”
In lieu of a formal endorsement, Trump and the White House have repeatedly said they believe either candidate can defeat Democratic candidate James Talarico.
The deadline has passed for either Cornyn or Paxton to withdraw from the ballot, so the runoff will move forward as planned. The election will take place on May 26.
