Trump Takes Aim At Cornyn As Texas GOP Runoff Becomes Major Test For MAGA

President Donald Trump is once again making clear that loyalty matters in today’s Republican Party.

Just hours before Texas Republicans head into a critical Senate runoff, Trump is turning up the pressure on longtime Sen. John Cornyn while throwing his political weight behind Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of the president’s strongest allies in the Lone Star State.

Trump has blasted Cornyn as “VERY disloyal,” a sharp rebuke aimed at a veteran senator who has long been aligned with the GOP establishment but has increasingly found himself out of step with the America First base.

The Texas runoff has quickly become more than a Senate primary. It is now a major test of Trump’s continued command over Republican voters and a referendum on whether grassroots conservatives want more of the old Senate establishment or a harder-edged fighter willing to confront Democrats head-on.

The winner of the Republican nomination will move on to face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in November. The race could become one of the most consequential Senate battles in the country as Republicans work to protect their narrow 53-47 majority.

Talarico secured the Democratic nomination after defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett, one of Trump’s most vocal critics in Congress, during the March primary.

Democrats are hoping to accomplish what they have failed to do for nearly four decades: flip a Texas Senate seat. But their hopes may be complicated by Talarico’s own record of progressive rhetoric, which Republicans are already preparing to use against him in the general election.

The Senate runoff is the highest-profile contest on the Texas ballot, but it is not the only race drawing national attention. Voters are also deciding key Republican and Democratic runoffs for attorney general, along with several closely watched congressional primaries.

One especially controversial race is taking place in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, where a Democratic runoff candidate drew backlash after suggesting on social media that a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility should be turned into a prison for American supporters of Israel.

The comment added fuel to growing concerns over the Democratic Party’s direction on immigration, anti-Israel activism, and far-left ideological politics.

For Talarico, the problem is similar. The progressive language that helped him win over left-wing activists in the primary could become a serious liability with mainstream Texas voters in November.

Republicans have already begun circulating old footage and social media posts showing Talarico embracing positions that are likely to be deeply unpopular in a historically red state.

Talarico has previously made statements such as “poverty is violence,” argued that the Bible supports abortion, claimed there are six biological sexes, and pushed other progressive cultural arguments that Republicans see as politically toxic.

In another speech, Talarico declared that “people don’t belong in cages” and appeared to compare prisons to “domestic abuse.”

The Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have already seized on those remarks, betting that Talarico’s record will not sit well with Texas voters who remain skeptical of the modern left’s cultural agenda.

The NRSC also launched a deepfake-style attack ad portraying Talarico as reading his own past “extreme statements praising transgenderism, twisting Christian beliefs, and advocating for open borders.”

One of the GOP’s central lines of attack is Talarico’s use of religion to advance progressive policy positions.

Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, has repeatedly accused conservatives of misrepresenting Christianity. But his own statements have given Republicans plenty of material.

“In my faith, God is non-binary,” Talarico said in a 2021 speech while opposing a Republican bill requiring K-12 athletes to compete on sports teams that match their biological sex.

That same year, Talarico also argued that biological sex is not limited to male and female.

“The one thing I want us to all be aware of is that modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes,” Talarico claimed at the time.

“In fact, there are six, which honestly, Rep. [Cole] Hefner, surprised me, too.”

Talarico’s remarks on transgender issues have become a major opening for Republicans, who are preparing to frame him as far outside the Texas mainstream.

“I want to acknowledge that our trans community needs abortion care too,” Talarico said at one point.

RNC spokesman Zach Kraft offered a blistering assessment of Talarico’s record.

“It has been a blessing for parents across the Lone Star State to learn they need to be on the lookout for a creepy single man in his 30s looking to speak with kids about sex changes and which of the six genders they identify as,” RNC spokesman Zach Kraft told The Post.

For Trump and his supporters, the Texas runoff is another chance to send a message to Washington: Republican voters are no longer interested in polite managed decline. They want fighters.

Cornyn represents decades of institutional Republican politics. Paxton, despite years of attacks from Democrats and establishment critics, represents a more combative brand of conservatism aligned with Trump’s America First movement.

That contrast is now at the center of the Texas race.

And with control of the Senate on the line, the outcome could shape not only the future of Texas politics, but the direction of the Republican Party heading into November.