The Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio was packed to the rafters last night. Or so Donald would have you believe. In reality, what we witnessed was yet another troubling snapshot of the state of the Republican Party: a president so toxic that even his own candidates are willing to manufacture scheduling conflicts to avoid being photographed within shouting distance of him.
Let me back up and explain what’s actually happening here, because the situation in Texas tells us everything we need to know about what Donald has done to the Republican Party and where we stand with 27 days left until the midterms.
Donald is in San Antonio for the third time in a month to campaign for Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General running for Senate against Democrat James Talarico. This level of attention to a single state is unusual, particularly since Donald won Texas by 14 points in 2024. But here’s the problem: Ken Paxton is not winning. Not by a long shot. According to a Sienna College poll cited by Reuters, Talarico leads Paxton 51 percent to 45 percent. Donald’s approval rating among registered voters sits at 32 percent. That’s not just going poorly. That’s a catastrophic failure, and it’s happening in deep red Texas.
Now, Ken Paxton is arguably the worst Republican candidate on an entire slate of terrible ones. He’s been one of the most corrupt state attorneys general in recent memory. But even accounting for his many disqualifications, the fact that he’s losing should tell Donald something: his endorsement is worthless. More than that, it’s actively harmful.
Back in September, the Republican Party did something truly unprecedented. Parties save their national conventions for presidential election years. It’s tradition. It’s how things work. But Donald, desperate for attention and determined to fire up a base that seems increasingly tired of him, insisted on holding the first ever midterm convention in Dallas. The stated goal was to boost turnout and energy, despite the fact that Donald himself isn’t on the ballot.
At that convention, Paxton delivered what he clearly thought was high praise. He said Donald had delivered more for the country than anyone before, secured victories no other president could achieve, and always stood up for Texas. It was the kind of obsequious flattery that usually makes Donald beam. But here’s where things got interesting: Donald’s endorsement of Paxton was not a love letter. It was damning with faint praise, and it revealed something important about Donald’s state of mind.
Donald spent time criticizing the way Paxton dressed and talked. Let me be clear about the sheer audacity of this. The man who wears ill-fitting clown suits and whose voice sounds like he’s trying to grate cheese was criticizing how another man looked and sounded. But then listen to what he actually said about Paxton’s qualifications:
You may not like the way he looks, but here’s the news. In the history of Texas, he is the single greatest attorney general you’ve ever had and maybe the top attorney general in the whole United States.
Of course Donald thinks Paxton is the greatest attorney general. Paxton is corrupt, and corruption is Donald’s love language. That’s the only metric by which Donald measures people anymore: are they corrupt enough to serve his purposes? Are they willing to bend the rules? That’s the threshold for his approval.
But here’s what happened after that convention: Paxton’s numbers dropped. The same man caught on a hot mic admitted that when they held the convention, it tanked his polling across the board. The person running the convention, the person whose sole purpose was to boost Republican numbers, had the opposite effect. The Republican Party held an unprecedented event centered on Donald, and it made their Senate candidate weaker, not stronger.
Since then, things have only gotten worse. Paxton started telling donors and lobbyists that his campaign’s real problem is the war in Iran that Donald started. He pointed to gas prices. He pointed to diesel prices exceeding six dollars a gallon. This is what he told donors last month:
It’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel. When it’s over $6 per gallon for diesel, I mean it’s putting money in a lot of trucks that use diesel who are feeling the pinch. So I’d say that’s probably the biggest problem and that push drives up food prices and everything else. So that’s by far our biggest problem. And I think that’s why we’re having a hard time with numbers.
Now, Paxton’s not wrong about any of this. The war is a disaster. Gas and diesel prices are crushing working people. But what he’s not saying publicly, what he probably won’t say publicly, is that the person responsible for all of this is the president he’s desperately trying to keep close enough to garner support, but far enough away that voters won’t hold him responsible for supporting him.
This is the bind the Republican Party has created for itself.
When Greg Abbott, the incumbent governor of Texas, learned that Donald was planning to hold a rally in San Antonio with Paxton, he made a decision. He would not be there. Instead, his campaign released a carefully worded statement about scheduling conflicts. Let me translate: Greg Abbott, a longtime conservative Republican who has governed Texas as a deeply conservative state, is so concerned about being associated with Donald Trump that he’s willing to manufacture an excuse to avoid appearing with the president of the United States. Abbott is in a dead heat with his Democratic opponent. He needs every advantage. And the one thing that would hurt him most is being photographed at a campaign rally with Donald Trump.
This is not normal. This is not what happened four years ago. This is a president so profoundly unpopular that even Republicans who agree with him on policy are running for cover.
A Reuters review examined 62 of the most competitive House and Senate races. In 41 of those races, Republican candidates are creating distance from Donald. They’re breaking with him on policy. They’re downplaying their ties to him. They’re avoiding photos. They’re treating him like a liability rather than an asset.
Here’s what this really means: the Republican Party has realized that Donald Trump is toxic. They know it. They’ve known it for months. And now, with the midterms bearing down on them, they’re panicking because they can’t figure out how to win while also being associated with a man whose approval rating is 32 percent.
The irony is exquisite. Donald built a political movement based on cult-like loyalty. He demanded that Republicans bow to him. He destroyed anyone who stood against him. He consolidated power until the entire party bent to his will. And now, when he needs them most, they’re slipping away in the darkness. They’re taking his endorsements and his rallies, and they’re hoping against hope that voters won’t hold them accountable for supporting him.
But voters will. Voters are already doing that. And with 27 days left until these midterms, the Republican Party is learning a hard lesson: absolute loyalty to a deeply unpopular man is not a winning strategy. Eventually, even the people you’ve asked to betray everything they believe in will betray you.
Make sure you’re registered to vote. Check your registration today and keep checking right up until election day. Because this year, your vote might be the only thing standing between democracy and something far worse.
He's going win anyway. I just read this this afternoon:
Nearly 1,000 armed private guards have been deployed to post offices across the country ahead of Election Day. And the administration has gutted the very offices meant to protect our elections from foreign interference to the point where a Republican election official in Utah said the biggest threats now are “mostly from our own government.”
Thank you, Mary!