“I'm going to take the final 30 days, maybe a little bit more than that, because it's all about 35 races,” Trump said. “I'm going to go to every one of those 35 places, and we're going to see if we can get everyone elected."
Page A3From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 3 September 2026
Trump vows to personally save Paxton's campaign, then can't stop insulting his appearance.
As it ran on the front
Donald Trump has a plan for the midterms, and the plan is Donald Trump. "I'm going to take the final 30 days, maybe a little bit more than that, because it's all about 35 races," he said this week, promising to personally show up in every one of the 35 competitive contests Republicans need to hold the Senate and House. That was not, evidently, enough real estate for one man. The party's midterm convention, originally built around a single Trump keynote on September 10, has been reshuffled so he speaks both nights — a programming change a party official confirmed to Reuters, because one appearance could not contain the strategy.
Texas is the marquee stop. On August 27, as worries mounted inside the party that Democrats could actually flip the seat, Trump's trip to boost Attorney General Ken Paxton's Senate campaign became the story taking up oxygen on the midterm map. The oxygen kept getting thinner. The next day, Senator John Cornyn — whose seat Paxton is running to fill — told the Texas Tribune that Paxton is "lazy" and "a poor campaigner" who "doesn't raise money" and isn't "offering a very compelling case." Cornyn wasn't just talking. He was holding off on fundraising for Paxton entirely, which in Texas Senate math is the same as holding a press conference.…
…(cont) Paxton pushed back on August 31, telling Fox News's Jacqui Heinrich that Cornyn "doesn't know my schedule," that he's putting in "18 hours a day." Eighteen hours a day is a lot of hours for a campaign that still needed the president to fly in and personally save it.
Which brings us to Wednesday, and the man doing the saving. Trump vowed to campaign for Paxton and the rest of the Texas ticket ahead of a race against Democratic nominee James Talarico — and, after making that vow, offered a scathing review of Paxton's physical appearance. The vow and the insult arrived in the same news cycle, from the same source, about the same candidate he says he needs on the trail in all 35 places he's about to personally visit.
That is the strategy: one man, 35 races, two convention nights, and a headline act in Texas whose own party colleague won't write him a check and whose own patron can't get through a sentence about him without a caveat. The candidates change. The man promising to save all of them, personally, does not.
“Here's the tell: the fundraiser who'd actually have to sit next to Paxton won't put a dollar behind him, and the guy flying in to save him can't finish talking about him without a jab. That's not loyalty, that's triage — Trump's spreading himself across 35 races and two convention nights because the ground game underneath him is this thin. You want to know who's paying for that gap? Not Cornyn.”
“Look, the President is doing 35 races personally, that's commitment, that's — nobody else on that stage is doing 35 anything. And on Paxton, sure, there was a comment about his appearance, but he also vowed to campaign for him, so clearly it's — wait, he vowed to save him and then trashed how he looks? Did I say that? That's not — that's just the President being candid, which is a strength, actually, when you think about it. Cornyn calling him lazy, that's an internal party matter, totally separate, unrelated to anything.”
The receipts
The president said he’ll travel to help out GOP candidates in competitive midterm contests, including the Senate races in Alaska and Texas.
President Trump’s trip to Texas to boost GOP midterm efforts, including state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s (R) Senate campaign, is highlighting the red state’s prominence on the midterm election map as it takes up oxygen in Republicans’…
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) on Sunday pushed back on Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) calling him a “lazy” campaigner. “John Cornyn doesn’t know my schedule. He doesn’t know how many hours I’m putting in every day, 18 hours a day,”…
President Donald Trump on Wednesday offered up a scathing review of Attorney General Ken Paxton’s physical appearance but vowed to campaign for the Texas Senate nominee and a host of other Republican contenders in tight races ahead of November. Paxton, who is running against Democratic nominee James Talarico, is one of multiple GOP…
President Donald Trump is now scheduled to speak on both nights of the Republican Party’s 2026 midterm convention next week, according to a report. The president had been scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Sept. 10 but is now set to speak on both nights of the convention, a party official told Reuters, in […]
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is holding off on fundraising for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his race to replace the senator in the upper chamber, calling Paxton “lazy.” “Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Cornyn told the Texas Tribune. “He’s…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.