Friday, October 2, 2026

Trump's Texas troubles

Donald Trump is not acting like a man confident that his man will win the Texas Senate race.

Less than a month after hosting a two-day midterm convention in Dallas on the sidelines of one of the biggest Senate races this cycle, Trump was back Thursday in Denton, Texas.

He spoke to a crowd at a manufacturing plant and crowed about his work to bring back auto manufacturing to the United States, telling his fans that it was the media's fault for his low approval rating in the state and nationwide.

"We have the greatest numbers of any president in the history of our country, and I can't get the word out,” he complained.

But his crowd of fans grew quiet after a while, and it's clear that Trump is going to need more than the blame game to win them back.

The first person to admit that? Ken Paxton, apparently.

The GOP attorney general of Texas, trailing his Democratic opponent in a state where Republicans haven't lost a statewide race since the '90s, was asked at a fundraiser this month whether Trump was a "drag" on his campaign.

“So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers,” Paxton said, according to leaked audio obtained by The New York Times. “Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.”

Translated: The "Trump Effect" may still be a winning ticket in GOP primaries, but right now it could be the reason the party sees defeat in November.

With Republican senators having left Washington on the backs of failing to pass a congressional stock trading ban and hounded by affordability concerns, the president may in the end have very little to offer Paxton and the other GOP candidates running to protect twin majorities in Congress next month.

This is a big, big problem for Republicans.

Read more here.

By John Bowden

Reading list

Daily briefing

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What else you need to know

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