Trump Is Cannibalizing Republicans Now

0:00So Trump successfully primaried Senator John Cornyan of Texas. Is it John Cornyn or Cornian? I can never remember. John Cornyn. Thank you. So Trump successfully primaried Senator John Cornyn of Texas. Why? I mean, aside from the fact that the guy's been in office for, what, 40 years? Senator Cornyn is about as conservative Republican as you can get. And they replaced him with Ken Paxton? Ha ha! An admitted adulterer who was indicted for securities fraud? Impeached as attorney general? Abuser of public office? scandal-plagued culture warrior, and the walking embodiment of the idea that loyalty to Donald Trump and Trump alone matters more than personal character or institutional integritae.

0:46This is not conservatism. This is Trump publicly assassinating an actual conservative politically and then replacing him with another lecherous con job in Ken Paxton who is just like himself. But you know, they will send your ass straight to jail for adultery in the military to this day. So our soldiers are held to a higher standard? Not so much with our representatives. Tell me how that makes any sense. Should we listen to a portion of John Cornyn's concession speech? Uh, no thank you. No! He's too old. And he's been serving for too long. So he's gotta go too. But replacing him with Ken Paxton is just stupid.

1:23Top headline at Newsweek. Did Donald Trump just hand Texas to Democrats? because this could deliver a defeat that Republicans haven't seen in over 30 years. And Senator Cornyn certainly thinks it's a possibility as well. I believe that in terms of our success in November, that Ken Paxton would be an albatross around the neck of our candidates and would likely lose to James Tallarico. I think we've come too far and worked too hard to risk that. Trump wants allies in the Senate. And he's used his platform and power to persuade voters to kick Cornyn out of office for being, quote, very disloyal, even though Cornyn voted with Trump over 99 % of the time.

2:02And now, Trump risks losing a Republican in the Senate because an open seat is much easier for Democrats to flip than ousting an incumbent because incumbents win re-election about 75 % of the time. And open seats account for a disproportionate share of flips. While those don't happen frequently, they're nearly twice as likely to happen when an incumbent is not in the race, according to data analyzed by Newsweek. On Tuesday, Paxton, a MAGA firebrand, defeated Cornyn with 62.5 % of the vote, with 57 % of the vote counted. And now he'll go on to face Democrat James Tallarico in the general election in November.

2:41Polls show Tallarico making for a tight race, but Cornyn had a slight edge over Paxton. In a poll taken in the month of May, Cornyn beat Tallarico 45 % to 44%. And in a head-to-head matchup with Paxton, Tallarico and the Republican are tied at 45 % each. In an April poll from the University of Texas, Tallarico came out on top in a head-to-head matchup with Cornyn by 7 points. In a head-to-head matchup with Paxton, Tallarico fares slightly better, winning by 8 points. So, it looks like it's going to make for a tight race in Texas. even tighter than if Trump would have just simply left Senator Cornyn alone.

3:18But he just can't help himself because he's a vindictive and shallow man-child gone mad with what restrained amounts of power he's allowed to actually have as our president. But let's not be too optimistic here. Paxton could still win this thing, even though politics is getting increasingly competitive for Republicans in Texas in recent years, which this fantastic Newsweek article goes on to dissect in greater detail than we will go into now. So first it was Congressman Thomas Massey in Kentucky, now it's Senator John Cornyn in Texas. No, MAGA clearly is not dead, but it has started eating its own kind like some sort of dumb animal that doesn't know any better.

3:56Reminds me of my parents who feed leftover chicken to their chickens. I know it's gross, right? John Cornyn spent years trying to prove his loyalty to Trump. By his own numbers, he voted with Trump roughly 99 % of the time during Trump's presidency. He backed Trump's judges, his border wall funding, his tax cuts, the anti-impeachment positions, the January 6th commission opposition, and most major Trump-era GOP priorities. But a small handful of items made him radioactive to the MAGA base anyway, by saying in 2016 that Trump could become an albatross for Republicans. In 2020, he briefly tried distancing himself from Trump electorally.

4:37In 2023, he said Republicans need a candidate who can actually win, and added that Trump's time has passed him by. Ooh, that's a big no-no. That's probably the one that got him the boot. Senator Cornyn carried the stink of the Bush-era establishment Republican in a party now dominated by the stink of Trump-era populist crybaby politics. And that was enough to do it. Because in MAGA, being conservative is no longer the test. The final test is whether you showed hesitation. any form of independence, or insufficient enthusiasm toward Trump personally. Cornyn failed that test years ago, even though his voting record was virtually the same as Trump loyalists in practice.

5:19Trump needs you to stand up on your table and applaud him vociferously, in addition to agreeing with him constantly because he's an insecure idiot who sincerely takes offense at anything short of pure allegiance. I'm not sure how many other conservative representatives that Trump plans to unseat to exact his revenge on those who don't fully worship his image, but his window for this kind of petty retaliation is closing as we inch closer to November. Which is why it's been hilarious to watch Trump becoming irate with Congress and the courts for holding up his stupid ballroom. For years, Republicans have stayed quiet because crossing Trump meant getting politically executed in a primary, as we've just seen with Massey and Cornyn.

6:00But now, even some Republicans are starting to push back, as Trump demands everyone fall in line behind his now more than billion dollar White House ballroom and monument projects. It looks like they're realizing that the fear no longer works as we inch closer to November, and Trump's ability to politically assassinate anyone who disagrees with him comes to a close. Because if a guy like John Cornyn can still get primaried and replaced with an adulterer and a securities fraud indicted culture warrior fraud like Ken Paxton, then loyalty clearly does not protect anyone anymore. And at that point, Republicans probably figure that they might as well start saying what they actually think.