Trump's Personal Shots at Paxton Could
Be Payback for Runoff Demand Defiance
Capitol Inside
September 13, 2026
President Donald Trump may have been exacting a pound of flesh with the bizarre way he treated Texas Republican Ken Paxton at the GOP's midterm convention in Dallas this week when a glowing plug for a U.S. Senate campaign was overshadowed by demeaning comments on his looks and ability to speak.
But the wherefores and the whys of Trump's preoccupation with Paxton's appearance and the way he expresses himself remains the most greatest mystery that the first national convention for the GOP before a midterm election left in its tracks after a two-day run that ended on Thursday night.
The prize for enduring the embarrassment that Trump forced Paxton to suffer was an infusion of campaign cash to the tune of $51 million from the Senate Leadership Fund on top of $10 million from Trump's MAGA Inc super PAC and several million that Elon Musk is said to be spending on the AG.
But Trump ran the risk for no apparent reason of hurting Paxton's chances at the polls in a fight against Democrat James Talarico by making the state attorney general a personal punching bag and patsy on the Senate nominee's largest and most important stage in a long political career. Trump could have been testing Paxton's loyalty with the insults that no one has been able to explain. But an unquenchable need for revenge regardless of the cost could have been the driving factor behind Trump's disrespect in Dallas.
Trump raised the specter of potential payback on March 5 when Paxton said he would refuse to withdraw from the race if the president pitched his support to incumbent John Cornyn for a primary runoff like Republicans believed he was poised to do for the good of the party in a bid to protect the Texas seat in 2026.
Trump said the day after the March 3 primary election that he was on the verge of picking a side in the Texas Senate runoff. Cornyn would get the nod according to the prevailing sentiment among Republicans who thought Trump would bow in the face of intense pressure from Senate Republican leaders and major donors who saw Paxton as an uncecessary risk due as a consequence of unprecedented baggage that he brought to the fight.
The president said he would demand that the Texas Senate candidate who failed to secure his formal support drop out of the contest immediately. But Paxton declared the following day that he would not quit the race that he'd been running for almost an entire year if he missed out on the Trump endorsement. Trump responded to the prospects of defiance with a warning for the Texas AG.
"That is bad for him," Trump said in an interview with Politico. "So maybe, maybe that leads me to go the other direction.”
Paxton sought to muddy the waters on the position he'd take if he missed out on the endorsement - saying the next day that he'd consider the possibility of leaving the race if Senate Republicans removed their roadblock to the president's voting restrictions plan in the Save America Act. But that appeared to be little more than a bluff aimed at avoiding Trump's wrath and potential revenge for Paxton's threat of disobedience in the endorsement fallout.
Trump showed no signs of plans to punish Paxton for suggesting he'd defy the president's admonition for the loser of the competition for his formal support. But Paxton and the supporters who believe in him are wondering now why Trump would choose the state attorney general's biggest moment on the national stage to belittle him insults on his personal appearance and the way he talks.
Trump tried to make it sound like he was simply ribbing an an old pal. But the president's lamenting about Paxton's fashion choices and speaking abilities for several minutes in Dallas didn't go over like a joke beyond some scattered chuckling and groans when he repeated the claims several times in the speech.
Trump stressed with each indignity-dishing that Paxton was argubably the greatest state attorney general of all time. But the personal shots that appeared to serve no purpose or help the Paxton campaign in any conceivable fashion have GOP partisans scratching heads on why Trump felt so compelled to disrespect the same candidate he was praising urging the voters in his audience to elect.
Trump said during the keynote that Paxton had pleaded with him to not repeat the embarrassing personal portrayal at a rally that would have 2.5 million viewers on Fox News when the president spoke for nearly two hours on Wednesday. But the president said that he simply had to the personal pecadellos about Paxton with the world - offering no reason for the need to do so.
The opportunity to get back at Paxton for threatening to ignore the ultimatum on the endorsement could be a possible answer for the disrespect in Dallas. But only president knows what that would be - if he has one.
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