Donald Trump bet big on Ken Paxton in Texas, and plenty of Washington insiders never forgave him for it.
The polls are tight. The knives inside the GOP look even sharper.
Then a hidden recorder caught Paxton describing one restaurant run-in with John Cornyn that nobody was supposed to hear.
Ken Paxton Finally Says What Texas Republicans Have Whispered for Months
In public, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton keeps telling reporters he would “love to have” the backing of US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) after their bloody primary runoff.
But in a room full of donors in Washington, DC, Paxton dropped the polite act.
“He’s clearly not helping. He wants me to lose,” Paxton told the crowd at a September fundraiser, according to a recording CNN obtained from an attendee who opposes his campaign.
Lobbyists Chris Brinson and Susan Hirschmann hosted the event. Somebody asked Paxton about Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), the Democrat whom State Representative James Talarico beat in the Democrat primary. Paxton waved off her pull with voters and then swung straight to the Senator.
“I mean maybe a little bit around the margins, just like Cornyn, basically how much he affects me,” Paxton said.
And then he told the story everybody in Texas politics is now chewing on.
Paxton said a friend of his spotted Cornyn at a Dallas restaurant, bought dessert for the Senator’s table, and thanked him for supporting the ticket and supporting Paxton. By Paxton’s telling, the friendly gesture went over about as well as a skunk at a church picnic.
“Cornyn’s face went red. He backed off,” Paxton said. “He said, ‘Paxton’s gonna lose. We need to teach those Republicans a lesson. It’s going to be hard to learn, but they need to know that their decisions have consequences.’”
“That’s what he’s trying to do,” Paxton added. “That’s John Cornyn.”
CNN says it could not independently confirm the account. Rob Jesmer, a longtime Cornyn strategist, insists the restaurant conversation never took place.
“If Sen. Cornyn wanted Ken to lose, I can assure you he’d be more active in the campaign,” Jesmer told the network. “He has said he supports the Republican ticket. Given all Ken has said and done, I think that’s a pretty good place for Sen. Cornyn to be.”
Go back and read that last sentence slowly. It doesn’t exactly sound like a man itching to knock on doors for the nominee.
Paxton’s team brushed the audio off as “a story that doesn’t exist” and said Paxton has called, texted, and offered to sit down with Cornyn. Senior adviser Nick Maddux added, “We hope he will join us in our fight to preserve the institution that is the United States Senate and help save our majority.”
Cornyn Shows Up for Every Republican Except the One Running in Texas
Cornyn promised for months that he would back the Republican ticket no matter who won the primary.
But his actions since losing tell their own story. In an August interview with the Texas Tribune, Cornyn branded Paxton a “poor campaigner” and a “lazy” candidate. Then Cornyn and former President George W Bush headlined a Dallas fundraiser for six GOP Senate candidates in battleground races. Paxton didn’t make the cut.
The feud runs deep. Cornyn called Paxton’s long-running state securities fraud indictment an “embarrassment” back in 2022. Paxton eventually resolved that case through a deal requiring community service and restitution, and he has always denied wrongdoing. The Texas Senate acquitted him in his 2023 impeachment trial.
Cornyn didn’t let up. “Hard to run from prison, Ken,” he posted in February 2024.
On primary night, the Senator went further. “I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton to risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years,” Cornyn said, adding, “Judgment Day is coming for Ken Paxton.”
And Republican voters handed down their own judgment. Trump endorsed Paxton a week before the runoff, and Paxton sent the incumbent home.
Paxton’s argument against Cornyn never centered on personality. It centered on a record, including the 2022 gun control bill Cornyn shepherded through the Senate alongside Democrats and Joe Biden then signed into law. Texas gun owners remembered.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, one of Trump’s closest allies in the state, lumped Cornyn in with “sore losers undermining our party” after the runoff.
Cornyn’s camp isn’t the only holdout. Congressman Michael McCaul (R-TX) told CNN in September, “I’m supporting the party, but he was not my first choice, and I do think it’s going to have an impact down-ballot.”
Talarico smells blood. He told CNN he hopes to “live up to” Cornyn’s legacy and invited the Senator’s backers to “join this movement we’re building.” His campaign even hired a former Cornyn staffer over the summer.
And when some Republicans complained about that hire, Cornyn defended it on X, writing that “those concerned might want to channel their energy into broadening R[epublican] outreach.”
A late-September Fox News poll showed nearly a third of Republican likely voters holding an unfavorable view of Paxton. He still carried 90% of GOP voters. But about a fifth of “non-MAGA” Republicans broke for Talarico. A recent Paxton campaign memo admitted the “biggest challenge we face is shoring up Republicans following a bruising primary.”
National Republicans have poured well over $100 million into the general election. Trump told reporters he would “have no regrets at all” about his endorsement, and in early October he rallied with Paxton in San Antonio, calling him “perhaps the greatest attorney general in the United States of America.”
Chuck Schumer Ate Crow in Michigan, and Cornyn Still Refuses a Single Bite
Now look north to Michigan.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democrat establishment lined up behind Congresswoman Haley Stevens (D-MI) in that state’s Senate primary. Abdul El-Sayed, a left-wing outsider running on a government-run healthcare scheme called Medicare for All, beat her anyway in August.
El-Sayed spent the campaign taunting the party’s leader. “If you’re Chuck Schumer, I’m dangerous,” he said.
So what did Schumer do once the votes came in? He fell right in line. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who runs the Democrat Senate campaign arm, put out a joint statement declaring, “We look forward to working with Abdul and Democrats across Michigan to win this seat in November.”
Democrats close ranks around their insurgents, even the socialist ones. The Republican old guard sulks in the corner and orders dessert.
Karl Rove, the chief strategist for the establishment RINO wing of the party, couldn’t resist piling on either. “If John Cornyn were the nominee, this race would be over,” Rove told the Texas Tribune.
Rove’s crowd backed amnesty for illegal aliens, cheered free trade deals that shipped American factory jobs overseas, and sold the country on endless wars. That same strategy steered the GOP into the 2006 and 2008 wipeouts, as the Iraq War and the Wall Street collapse rolled out the red carpet for Barack Obama. Voters fired that wing of the party once already.
But maybe the dessert story grew a little in the retelling. Secondhand tales from a friend at a restaurant usually do, and the Cornyn camp flatly denies it.
Still, Cornyn’s public record doesn’t need any embellishment. The “lazy” insult, the Bush fundraiser that skipped Texas, and the cheerful defense of a staffer jumping to the Democrat side all sit on the record in black and white.
And there’s the other strange piece of this puzzle. CNN describes this clip as at least the fifth recording to leak from the same private fundraiser, every one of them landing at the worst possible moment for Paxton. Earlier clips caught him griping about Trump’s midterm convention and about losing “control” of his own race to outside groups. Somebody walked into a lobbyist-hosted donor event, recorded the whole thing, and has been feeding it to the press one piece at a time. Nobody has said who.
The real fight here stretches well past one Senate seat. The establishment wants its party back once Trump leaves office, and it has its sights set on 2028, where JD Vance carries the America First banner against foreign wars and open-borders labor policies the donor class adores.
If Paxton’s account holds up, the “lesson” Cornyn supposedly wants to teach isn’t aimed at Paxton at all. It’s aimed at the Republican primary voters who dared to pick Trump’s candidate over the Senate’s.
Even Paxton’s estranged wife, Angela Paxton, sees the danger of Republicans staying home. She told a group of GOP women, “When you can’t vote for, then vote against,” before adding, “but vote.”
Cornyn promised Texans a Judgment Day. He just never said who would be standing in the dock.
Sources:
CNN, “‘He wants me to lose’: Paxton complains about lack of support from Cornyn in leaked audio”
Axios, “Abdul El-Sayed wins Democratic Senate primary in battleground Michigan”
The Post Millennial, “Schumer, Gillibrand rally behind ‘abolish ICE’ El-Sayed for Senate after Michigan primary win”
Reuters, “Progressive El-Sayed wins Michigan primary in jolt to Democrats”
Report on Karl Rove’s Texas Tribune interview, “Former House Leader McHenry Blasts ‘Astronomically Stupid’ Paxton for Dismissing Trump’s Midterm Convention”