KEN PAXTON, TROY DUHON & TRACY DUHON AT KENTUCKY DERBY MAY 2024
Texas AG is caught in shocking sex scandal as details of secret affair with married Christian influencer mom-of-seven are exposed 12SEP25
I don't know how anyone can be surprised NOT MY pres drumpf / trump has endorsed fascist kenny paxton against Sen fascist johnnie cornyn r-TX. paxton and drumpf / trump have a lot in common, they are compulsive liars, they are narcissist and they are adulterers. Actually cornyn is reaping what he has sown, all the time he spent as one of drumpf's / trump's sycophants has come to naught. Hope you never get the taste from kissing drumpf's / trump's butt all those years off your tongue johnnie. This from The Hill.....
Senate GOP expresses frustration, anger, sadness as Trump snubs Cornyn in Texas
by Alexander Bolton - 05/20/26 6:00 AM ET
President Trump’s decision Tuesday to snub Sen. John Cornyn and endorse state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate Republican primary was met with frustration, anger and even sadness by Senate Republicans.
The move likely sinks Cornyn’s hopes of winning another Senate term, and Republicans warned it could make it tougher to defeat Democratic candidate James Talarico in November.
Republican senators exuded pain for Cornyn, who served as Senate Republican whip during Trump’s first term and is deeply respected by his Senate GOP colleagues
“I’m really sad, I’m sad personally for John Cornyn and I hope he’s successful in his election regardless, and I’m sad for the institution,” said one GOP senator who requested anonymity to talk about the internal conference feelings.
“There’s no senator that works harder to make things happen around here, works harder to take care of his colleagues,” the GOP lawmaker lamented.
The senator noted that the tradition in the past has been for the president and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to work together to help Republican incumbents facing primary challengers.
“I think it’s sad for the institution. There’s something to this that’s really troubling,” the lawmaker added.
Trump’s decision to back Paxton over Cornyn came amid growing tensions with Senate Republicans over other issues.
Two of the biggest brewing fights are over funding for the White House ballroom and a $1.8 billion legal compensation fund for MAGA allies who claim they were targeted by the government.
Republican senators say the proposal to provide up to $1 billion in a budget reconciliation package to help build the White House ballroom, a top Trump priority, now appears to be dead.
A GOP senator familiar with internal discussions said funding will be provided to the Secret Service to improve security at the White House but warned that a Saturday ruling by the parliamentarian makes it all but impossible to fund the construction of the ballroom itself.
Several GOP senators also say they will vote against the ballroom funding, raising serious questions about whether it has enough political support to pass the Senate even if it passes muster with the Senate parliamentarian.
Some Republican senators saw Trump’s treatment of Cornyn as a snub of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who had worked behind the scenes for months to persuade the president to back him.
The NRSC invested in Cornyn through a joint fundraising committee, and One Nation, a fundraising group affiliated with Thune’s political operation, has spent more than $10 million helping Cornyn.
Thune appeared stone-faced when he walked into the Senate Republican lunch Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Trump announced his support of Paxton. Asked about Trump’s social media post on the subject, Thune answered somberly: “It’s his decision.”
The Senate GOP leader later told reporters at a press conference that he still sees Cornyn as giving Republicans the best chance of defending the Texas Senate seat in November.
“Sen. Cornyn is a principled conservative. He is a very effective senator for the state of Texas. But I don’t, none of us, control what the president does,” Thune said. “That doesn’t change the way I feel. And I am certainly supportive — I will continue to be supportive of Sen. Cornyn and his reelection.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she couldn’t understand Trump’s thinking, given that Paxton was charged with felony securities fraud and faced a lengthy prison sentence that he managed to avoid by reaching a deal with prosecutors to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution and complete 100 hours of community service.
“I don’t understand. He is an ethically challenged individual,” Collins said of Trump’s support of Paxton, who was charged of defrauding investors in a Dallas-area tech startup. The charges were later dropped after he agreed to a pretrial diversion program.
“John Cornyn is an outstanding senator and deserved in my judgment the president’s support. Obviously, it’s the president’s call, but I’m disappointed that he did it,” Collins said.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she was “supremely disappointed” in Trump’s endorsement of Paxton over Cornyn.
“I don’t understand it,” she said when asked about Trump’s motivation.
She said the endorsement will probably make it tougher for Republicans to keep the Texas seat from flipping in November.
“Based on the numbers that I’ve seen, yeah,” she said. “How does that help strengthen the president’s hand when we lose a state like Texas?”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) acknowledged that if Paxton wins the Texas Republican primary runoff on Tuesday, Republicans might be required to spend more money to defend the Texas seat in the fall.
“I suspect that there’s a belief that that’s a possibility,” he said. “Our focus was on John Cornyn and what a job he’s done for the people of Texas.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the vice chair of the Senate Republican Conference, said Trump “can endorse who he wants” but declared “I’m a big John Cornyn fan.”
Trump called Cornyn “a good man” in his Truth Social post endorsing Paxton but said the Texas senator “was not supportive of me when times were tough,” likely referring to Cornyn’s statement in 2023 that Trump’s time had “passed him by.”
GOP senators are still coping with their colleague Sen. Bill Cassidy’s lopsided loss in Saturday’s Louisiana Senate Republican primary.
Trump played a major role in Cassidy’s ouster from Congress by endorsing his primary opponent, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.), and urging his supporters on social media to vote against Cassidy, calling him “a sleazebag, a terrible guy, who is bad for Louisiana.”
Trump’s endorsement of Paxton and his attacks against Cassidy won’t make it any easier for him to muster GOP votes for his ballroom funding or for the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund to compensate MAGA allies who believe they were targeted by the government.
“I don’t expect to be voting for the ballroom funding,” Cassidy told reporters Tuesday.
He also criticized the administration’s decision to set up what he called a “slush fund” to compensate political allies, possibly including Trump supporters who were convicted of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
“People are concerned about making their own ends meet, not about putting a slush fund together without a legal precedent. We’re a nation of laws,” he said when asked about the so-called anti-weaponization fund.
