Trump preemptively blames Cornyn for Paxton's Senate loss, two weeks before Texans vote.

Clive Best-looking. I have been told the same thing about my verse, more or less, and I notice nobody endorsed me off the back of it.

Gary Nobody's endorsed your verse because nobody's read past the first line. I can at least finish a job. Ask the shed door.

Turn him over and look underneath, the way you would a chicken, and the Guardian has done the looking this week: getaway cars, affairs, a 2025 New Year's party in Dubai with two American fugitives who never came home, the whole file filed under one phrase, "uniquely ill-chosen."

You will be looking for the part where the party pulls him from the ticket. There is no such part: a nominee this damaged, two weeks out, is simply blamed instead, which is cheaper than a ballot reprint.

Rob Ill-chosen. Who among us was chosen at all, is what I want to know, and nobody's asked whose turn it is on the rota either.

Keith Nobody's answering that, so I'll say it: a party that can't pick a candidate is a party that needs a consultant, and I know a man who does flags.

Now we come to the money, and a toss-up this close does not wait for seconds. On the 3rd of September Karl Rove warned that time was running out and that Paxton needed Trump "tossing a lot of money" his way for ads against Talarico; those ads, so far as the record shows, never made it into the pan. On the 15th of October, with that gap still open, Trump posted that Senator John Cornyn and Rove "are doing everything possible" to hurt Paxton, blame assigned two weeks before anyone has lost anything. Paxton had already told donors otherwise: in a recording leaked on the 7th, he named the president's own war with Iran, gas prices, and diesel over six dollars a gallon as what was "dragging" his campaign.

This one serves whoever is holding the seat when the toss-up settles, Talarico or Paxton. Cornyn pays for it either way, in blame, whether or not he ever sent the money Rove asked for.

Clive Paying in blame with no money changing hands — that's just how the kitty works in this house, and I for one have never once seen a receipt.