Vice President JD Vance revealed a truth about the Republican Party on Tuesday as he explained the president’s endorsement of Texas attorney general Ken Paxton for Senate: “When it really counted, Ken Paxton was there for the country, was there for the president.”
Vance’s implication was that incumbent GOP Sen. John Cornyn failed to sufficiently support President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election — or, as Trump put it, “when times were tough.”
Yet Trump’s loyalty standard is not evenly applied. That’s something Vance, a former Trump critic, can personally attest to, as can many GOP lawmakers in Congress who have questioned one of Trump’s decisions or social media posts.
There isn’t a lot that sitting Republicans can do about that harsh reality, other than mourn Cornyn’s likely defeat.
“It saddened me,” Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told Semafor of Trump’s decision. “I don’t know what you can complain about on John Cornyn, he’s such a significant part of what we’re able to get done here. And a leader: Probably no senator that has done more to support other Republican senators. And I don’t know anything that he’s done that’s offensive in a significant way to the president.”
Sandbagging Cornyn a week before his runoff for years-old statements is a bigger act of potential self-sabotage than acting on an even older grudge against Louisiana GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy in a red state. Trump’s decision to back Paxton, whom Maine Sen. Susan Collins promptly described as “an ethically challenged individual,” is almost certain to make Republicans’ midterm campaign harder.
It was unclear what exactly changed Trump’s mind to weigh in on the race now, though he told reporters that he had “pretty much always known who I was going to endorse, but I just thought this was a good time, you know, the voting starting.”
Now, it’s all but guaranteed to make the Texas Senate seat more expensive to hold against Democratic nominee James Talarico, diverting resources that Republicans would have spent elsewhere. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., estimated the seat would be three times costlier to defend with Paxton as the nominee — a doable task, but one with wide-reaching ramifications across the Senate map.
Graham himself would also be out of luck if past Trump criticism were always politically fatal. He repeatedly warned against nominating the president in 2016 and even briefly jumped off the bandwagon after Jan. 6, 2021: “Count me out.” Trump has endorsed Graham for reelection this year.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., even endorsed Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., over Trump in the 2024 presidential primary. A year later, Trump endorsed Rounds for reelection, before Rounds had even decided to run again and after Trump vowed to “never endorse this jerk again.”
Cornyn’s sin, in the end, was a 2023 challenge for the GOP to “do better” than Trump: “The basic problem is, President Trump hasn’t figured out how to expand his appeal beyond his base,” Cornyn said at the time. He also thought the former president couldn’t win and “time has passed him by.”
After the Capitol riot and as Trump wracked up legal woes, those comments were not outside the GOP mainstream. But Cornyn’s Trump doubts haunted him in more ways than one: Republicans think they clouded his campaign to be Senate majority leader, a race he narrowly lost to Thune shortly after Trump’s second victory.
Cornyn ceased all subtle Trump criticism after 2024, saying he was happy to be wrong about the president’s general-election appeal. He conspicuously read The Art of the Deal and joined Trump’s campaign against the legislative filibuster. Thune spent countless conversations trying to convince Trump to endorse Cornyn as a sure bet in November.
None of that mattered. Trump is “looking backward now. And he’s looking at people who were not there when he needed them the most. And he has the right to do that,” Graham said.
That doesn’t mean every Republican has to agree. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Semafor “of course” he still supports Cornyn but is “still digesting” Trump’s decision.
“I don’t understand it,” Collins said. “John Cornyn is an outstanding senator and deserved, in my judgement, the president’s support. Obviously it’s the president’s call, but I’m disappointed that he did it.”
