US President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House, Washington DC, Oct. 15, 2026.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Thursday said that if Texas Senate nominee 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 “doing everything possible to make it hard” for Paxton, the state’s attorney general, to beat Democratic nominee James Talarico. Cornyn lost the Republican primary to Paxton, whom Trump controversially endorsed.
“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 blame-casting came as Texas has surprisingly become one of the most competitive battlegrounds of the 2026 midterm cycle. Most recent polls show state Rep. Talarico maintaining a lead in the low-to-mid single digits over Paxton.
The reliably red state has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988. In 2024, Texans voted for Trump over Democratic presidential nominee 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 post.
Trump’s decision to back Paxton in the GOP primary delivered a major blow to the four-term 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 stave off Democrats’ goal of winning majority control of the Senate, groups backing Republicans have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Texas contest, making it the most expensive race of the cycle.
GOP spending in the race has topped $370 million so far, eclipsing Democratic spending by nearly $235 million, according to AdImpact.
Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Rove, calling him a “loser” and urging Fox News to stop putting him on air.
Rove, who was a senior advisor to former President George W. Bush, “is so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often,” Trump wrote in a Sept. 14 Truth Social post.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed two days later, Rove said that he would back a Democratic candidate in a different race in Texas, voting blue for just the second time in his life.
