Conservative Columnist Calls Out Trump for Sitting Out High-Stakes GOP Primary in Texas

LEFT: John Cornyn (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) CENTER: Donald Trump (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) RIGHT: Ken Paxton (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

National Review‘s Jim Geraghty called out President Donald Trump on Wednesday for sitting out Texas’s high-stakes GOP Senate primary.

On March 4, Trump announced his intention to issue an endorsement in the runoff between incumbent Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a Truth Social post that read:

The Republican Primary Race for the United States Senate in the Great State of Texas, a State I LOVE and won 3 times in Record Numbers (the HIGHEST vote ever recorded, by far!!!), cannot, for the good of the Party, and our Country, itself, be allowed to go on any longer. IT MUST STOP NOW! We have an easy to beat, Radical Left Opponent, and we have to TOTALLY FOCUS on putting him away, quickly and decisively! Both John and Ken ran great races, but not good enough. Now, this one, must be PERFECT! My Endorsements within the Republican Party have been virtually insurmountable! It is such an honor to realize and say that almost everyone I Endorse WINS, and wins by a lot, especially in Texas! I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Subsequently, Paxton indicated he would not drop out even if Trump threw his support behind Cornyn, which he was reportedly planning on doing imminently. But after Paxton issued a statement bashing Cornyn for not supporting the president’s plan to do away with the filibuster, the president held off, even after Cornyn came around to the idea.

Geraghty observed on Wednesday that “Trump doesn’t always behave as if he himself believes his endorsements amount to near-automatic victories in Republican primary battles. Some of us are still waiting for Trump to make his endorsement in the Texas GOP Senate runoff between Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton.”

“‘Soon’ is apparently an elastic term, as here we are, more than two months later, and Trump has still not endorsed either candidate,” he observed, before concluding that, “If you were a cynic, you would think that Trump’s desire to endorse the winner makes him afraid to endorse a candidate who he thinks might lose, and the closeness of this race makes him hesitant to endorse either candidate.”

“But that’s only if you were a cynic,” he added facetiously.

Cornyn is widely seen as the more electable Republican candidate, while Paxton has long been dogged by both personal and public corruption scandals. The winner of the runoff between them will face off against Democrat James Talarico in November’s general election.

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