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…
Page A3From§Eachthe milkman edition — 3 September 2026
Trump mocks Paxton's looks, then vows to personally campaign for him in all 35 races
As it ran on the front
The president's midterm math is simple: thirty-five races, one man, thirty days. That is the plan he laid out this week, unadorned, and it deserves to be taken at face value. He intends to go to every one of those thirty-five places personally — Alaska's Senate seat and Texas's among them — and see what can be salvaged. This is not, I want to be precise here, a sign of alarm. It is scale.
It is worth remembering how Texas got on that list at all. On August 27th, the trip to boost Ken Paxton's Senate campaign was framed as evidence of the state's prominence on the map, a red state suddenly worth a spot on the president's calendar. The following day, Senator John Cornyn told the Texas Tribune that Paxton is "lazy," a "poor campaigner" who doesn't raise money and hasn't made a compelling case to voters — which, if you squint, is also a description of why a state doesn't usually need thirty-five-race triage in the first place. Paxton answered on Fox News three days later: eighteen hours a day, he said, Cornyn just doesn't know his schedule. Both statements came from Republicans, about a Republican nominee, in a state Republicans are supposed to already have locked down.…
…(cont) So the president arrives this week with the fix: he will go to Texas, he will go to Alaska, he will go wherever it's close. And on the subject of Paxton specifically, he offered — I want to call this an endorsement, and it is an endorsement — a review of the candidate's physical appearance, scathing by the Washington Examiner's own account, delivered in the same breath as the vow to campaign for him. That is not a contradiction. That is a candidate who needed thirty-five stops finding out one of them thinks he's ugly and is showing up anyway. I suppose that's — actually, that is the whole strategy. The man Cornyn called lazy and unable to raise money is getting the president's calendar and his contempt in the same week, and the campaign is calling both of those help.
Thirty-five races is not a number you produce from strength. It's a number you produce from a spreadsheet nobody wanted to run, and Paxton is the line item where it shows.
“Guy's got so little bench left he's personally hopping into thirty-five races, and the one he's stumping hardest for just got called lazy and broke by his own party's senator. That's not a campaign, that's triage on a building that's already on fire. The ladder-holder is insulting the guy on the ladder and calling it a rescue.”
“Look, thirty-five races, that's just presidential leadership, going where he's needed most — and sure, Paxton's got some baggage, everybody knows that, but the President's commitment to him is ironclad, rock solid, he said himself he's going to Texas — wait, he also said the guy looks like that, on the record, same week? Did I say ironclad? That's — that's not what I meant to say.”
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.
“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."
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 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’…
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…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.