US President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington DC on October 15, 2026.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said Thursday that if Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton loses, it will be the fault of incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn and conservative commentator Karl Rove.
Trump accused Cornyn and Rove of “going out of their way to make it difficult” for Paxton, the state’s attorney general, to beat Democratic candidate James Talarico. Cornyn lost the Republican primary to Paxton, whom Trump controversially supported.
“If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE political hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump’s preemptive accusations come as Texas has surprisingly emerged as one of the most competitive battlegrounds in the 2026 midterm cycle. The most recent polls show state Rep. Talarico maintaining a 1- to 5-digit lead over Paxton.
This reliably red state hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988. In 2024, Texans voted for Trump over Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris by nearly 14 percentage points.
Cornyn’s office and Rove did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment on Trump’s message.
Trump’s decision to support Paxton in the Republican Party primaries dealt a blow to incumbent Cornyn, whom the president viewed as disloyal. The move was also seen as a major gamble, as Paxton’s history of scandal and opposition within his own party has made him a polarizing figure.
Hoping to thwart Democrats’ goal of winning majority control of the Senate, groups supporting Republicans have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Texas race, making it the most expensive race of the cycle.
The Republican Party’s spending in the race has so far exceeded $370 million, eclipsing Democratic spending by nearly $235 million, according to AdImpact.
Trump repeatedly lashed out at Rove, calling him a “loser” and urging Fox News to stop broadcasting him.
Rove, who was a senior adviser to former President George W. Bush, “is so bad for the Republican Party, and wrong so often,” Trump wrote in a Sept. 14 Truth Social article.
In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece two days later, Rove said he would support a Democratic candidate in another Texas race, voting blue for only the second time in his life.
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