Senate majority leader John Thune.
It’s not every day that Donald Trump manages to piss off a long list of Republican lawmakers to the point that they are willing to express it publicly, but that’s what happened on Tuesday when the president offered a very late endorsement in the upcoming GOP Senate primary in Texas. Taking a break from boosting his unpopular war and ballroom, Trump announced his support for scandal-plagued state attorney general Ken Paxton over incumbent Senate Republican stalwart John Cornyn — who Trump claimed wasn’t loyal enough to him. Many see the endorsement as both a death knell for Cornyn and a boon for Democratic challenger James Talarico, and plenty of Republicans apparently agree. Here’s how Cornyn’s colleagues responded to Trump’s big announcement:
He’s been trying to avoid this exact situation for a long time:
The incumbent Louisiana senator just suffered his own primary defeat after Trump endorsed his challenger, and he had one of the more pointed responses to the president’s Paxton nod:
Collins, who is the Senate’s master of understated after-the-fact criticism, told reporters:
