Ken Paxton knocked off a four-term incumbent Senator with President Trump standing right behind him.
Then somebody carried a recorder into a room full of donors, and the press corps figured it finally had its wedge.
And a reporter walked into the Oval Office with one loaded question and got an answer nobody in that room saw coming.
The Oval Office Question About Ken Paxton
Axios published audio of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton talking to donors behind closed doors about why his Senate campaign is “having a hard time with numbers.”
Paxton won the Republican nomination by beating US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), who held the seat for more than 20 years. President Trump backed Paxton over Cornyn.
Now Paxton faces Democrat James Talarico, and Mediaite reports Talarico holds a narrow lead in recent polling. A ReconMR/Texas Pulse survey taken in September put Talarico ahead 49 percent to 43 percent, according to Newsweek.
So when the tape surfaced, the press smelled blood.
A reporter in the Oval Office asked President Trump whether he “regrets” the endorsement.
“No, no, no. Not at all. He was a great attorney general. I think he’ll be a great senator. Ken Paxton was the best, or certainly one of the few best, but the best attorney general in the whole country. And no, I would have no regrets at all,” Trump said.
A President can’t say no much flatter than that.
And it came from a man who hasn’t exactly babied his candidate. Mediaite notes Trump has poked fun at the way Paxton dresses and called him a “pain in the a**” at a rally this month. Trump ribs the people he likes, and anybody who has sat through one of his rallies knows it.
What Paxton Told Donors on the Tape
The recording turned out a lot tamer than the coverage promised.
“It’s not tariffs… it’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel, over $6 per gallon… people are feeling the pinch,” Paxton said on the audio.
He kept going. “That’s probably the biggest problem and that pushed out the food prices and everything else… So that’s by far our biggest problem.”
Paxton also reportedly told the room his numbers dropped after Trump’s Dallas convention.
Strip away the breathless write-ups and here’s a candidate telling donors that Texans pay too much for diesel. Any trucker in Amarillo could have told them that for free.
But notice what Paxton ruled out in his first three words. The tariffs the donor class swore would sink the economy didn’t make his list.
The war with Iran did, and that’s where the President’s negotiators come in. US Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA), no friend of this administration, said in a recent television interview that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff briefed members of Congress on a ceasefire memorandum.
A deal that stops the shooting brings diesel down faster than any stump speech. And the loudest voices against that kind of diplomacy belong to the same neoconservative crowd that sold the country on Iraq.
Why John Cornyn’s Donors Sat on Their Hands
Now for the part the Oval Office reporter skipped.
Paxton’s numbers have a history, and it starts in Washington, DC. The National Republican Senatorial Committee spent millions during the primary painting Paxton as incompetent and ethically compromised, the Texas Tribune reported. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) stuck with Cornyn even after Trump endorsed Paxton.
Republican voters heard those attacks for months, from their own party’s leadership. Some of them still haven’t come home.
Then summer arrived. Axios reported in July that Texas didn’t make the NRSC’s list of eight battleground races, and it didn’t make the first round of ad reservations from the super PAC tied to Thune either. Talarico raised $30 million in the second quarter to Paxton’s $9 million, according to the Texas Tribune.
And Cornyn? He told Semafor he wouldn’t send Paxton any money, adding that Trump “can spend his money.” The Tribune reported that many of Cornyn’s longtime donors sat out the race after the runoff.
This is the same Cornyn who served as the lead Republican negotiator on the 2022 gun control bill Joe Biden signed, and who spent years entertaining amnesty deals for illegal aliens brought here as minors. Texas Republicans noticed.
But look at how the other party handled its own upset. In Michigan, far-left candidate Abdul El-Sayed beat US Representative Haley Stevens (D-MI), the pick of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), by less than one point.
Three days later, Michigan Democrats staged a unity rally, and Stevens told CBS News she’d campaign with the man who beat her, the Associated Press reported. Nobody on that side told the winner to go find his own money.
Thune’s operation did open the checkbook eventually. The Senate Leadership Fund lifted its Texas ad buy to $100 million in September, per the Texas Tribune. But that cavalry rode in after Talarico spent a whole summer introducing himself to Texans with almost nobody answering.
A late check doesn’t erase a year of party leaders calling their own nominee unfit. Plenty of Paxton’s backers wonder whether some in the establishment would sooner watch a Democrat hold that seat than swear in a MAGA Senator, and the summer silence didn’t do much to quiet them.
A reporter went fishing for regret and came up empty. The people with a reason to feel some work at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Sources: Mediaite, “Reporter Asks Trump if He ‘Regrets’ Endorsing Ken Paxton Following Leaked Audio”; Axios, “Scoop: Thune to attend Paxton fundraiser”; Texas Tribune reporting on Senate Leadership Fund spending and John Cornyn’s fundraising; Newsweek, “Paxton Gets Another $5 Million Boost as Talarico Remains Ahead in Texas”; Associated Press, “Democrats try to present a united front in Michigan after bitter primary”; Grabien transcript of Rep. Madeleine Dean interview
Meta description: President Trump said he has no regrets about endorsing Ken Paxton after leaked donor audio showed Paxton blaming the Iran war and gas prices for his polls.
