There’s an old saying in politics: Make your friends before you need them. And right now, President Donald Trump might very well regret making an enemy of Texas Sen. John Cornyn.
On Wednesday, the day before the Senate Judiciary Committee was set to vote to confirm Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to formally head the Department of Justice, Cornyn canceled a final meeting with Blanche.
Cornyn has been fairly transparent about what he needs: clarification, in writing, on the IRS settlement that the president received that would prohibit the agency from investigating the president and his family in perpetuity. And also a written guarantee that a so-called “weaponization fund” that Blanche was forced to scrap from the original settlement would never be brought back to being.
“We actually sent them a red line strikeout of what we need, and they just need to make a decision,” Cornyn told reporters on Wednesday. “ And if they do, then we’ll proceed with the markup.”
That’s the explanation on the surface, and it is true. But this matter goes much deeper than that for Cornyn, the last of the genteel Bush-era Republicans from Texas. It’s a chance for Cornyn to exact his revenge against Trump for a very personal betrayal a few months ago.
open image in galleryFor much of the past two years, Cornyn saddled up close to Trump, snapping photos of himself reading The Art of the Deal and posing in front of Trump Burger in Texas. He voted for all of Trump’s nominees, the Trump tax cuts, their extensions in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” and voted to acquit Trump after the impeachment trial for Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021.
But Trump refused to endorse him as he faced a primary against ultra-MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton in the initial primary race in March. Cornyn earned enough to clear the primary but not a majority, which forced a runoff and had warned that if Paxton would win the primary, it would allow Democrats to possibly flip a Senate seat for the first time in the state since 1988.
As an insurance policy, he even changed his policy on the filibuster after Paxton said he would drop out if the Senate got ditched 60-vote threshold to pass the Trump priority SAVE America Act.
Instead, Trump shocked the entire Republican conference when he endorsed Paxton over Cornyn. Armed with Trump’s endorsement, Paxton would go on to crush Cornyn in the runoff.
Now, most polling shows that Paxton is locked in a tight race with Democratic nominee James Talarico in what might be the most unsatisfying “I told you so” for Cornyn.
But there’s also an opportunity for revenge here for Texas’ senior senator. The Senate Judiciary Committee is about a dead-even split right now. Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina, who took over for her late brother Lindsey, sits on the committee and Republicans are figuring out if they need her to come back up amid the memorial services for her brother.
open image in galleryThat means Republicans can afford no defections if they want to get Blanche through committee and onto the floor before the August recess (and no, Mr. President, the Senate will not cancel its recess for the SAVE America Act).
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who is retiring and has also clashed with Trump, has made his demands fairly clear: he wants to make sure the “anti-weaponization fund” that Blanche announced is a dead letter.
“The key there is exactly what I’ve said: that this agreement, the 1776 fund [referring to the 1.776 billion it had called for to be paid out to so-called victims of persecution at the hands of prior Democratic administrations] needs to go away, and the the language with respect to audits needs to be very tightly tailored,” he told The Independent.
“Doesn’t include anybody but the parties of the agreement, and it can only be retroactive. You do that, and I’m prepared to support.”
But Tillis already got his pound of flesh when he torpedoed Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary. And Tillis seems satisfied with Blanche meeting with victims of Jeffrey Epstein despite their criticisms of the meeting and calling on Tillis to vote “no.”
Cornyn has yet to exact his revenge. After his bruising loss, the silver-haired Texan told The New York Times’ Capitol Hill sage Carl Hulse of Trump, “If that’s the way friends treat you, you wonder about his enemies” and that “I think it is going to be a pretty bumpy ride for the next seven months.”
A “no” vote from Cornyn could be entirely meaningless and his chance to rage against the dying of his career. Or it could give others like Sen. Susan Collins, who needs to find ways to break from Trump to win in Maine, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska the gumption to sink Blanche.
Either way, Cornyn is about to become a very powerful man. And back in Texas, Talarico has agreed to three debates against the decidedly uncharismatic Paxton.
Last week, when The Independent asked if Cornyn, a longtime Republican rainmaker, would raise money for Paxton, his answer was simple and at the ready.
“No,” the veteran legislator said.