GOP Sen. Cornyn Says He’s Privately Raised Disagreements With Trump: ‘More Effective’ Than ‘Public Confrontations’

Some Republicans have gotten more candid about the upcoming election and President Donald Trump in particular as November 3rd approaches. Senator Ben Sasse perhaps had the strongest words of any congressional Republican in comments that took off this week, leading to multiple tweets from the president going after him.

Senator John Cornyn, up for reelection in Texas, didn’t come close to Sasse’s level of frustration at the president, but in speaking with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board, he likened his relationship to Trump to “maybe like a lot of women who get married and think they’re going to change their spouse, and that doesn’t usually work out very well.”

He says that he has raised disagreements with the president on policy — from trade to the border wall — but has done so privately because, “I have found that has allowed me to be much more effective, I believe, than to satisfy those who say I ought to call him out or get into a public fight with him.”

“What I tried to do is not get into public confrontations and fights with him because, as I’ve observed, those usually don’t end too well,” the senator said, referencing in part Trump’s public feuding with his former Senate colleague Bob Corker.

Cornyn says he particularly took issue with “taking money from the defense budget to build portions of a border wall,” per the Star-Telegram, arguing that while he’s “very much a defense hawk,” he didn’t like using funds for that specific push.

There’s been some hope among Democrats that Texas could be competitive this year. The most recent polls show Cornyn ahead of his opponent MJ Hegar