{"id":431361,"date":"2026-09-10T04:54:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T04:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/431361\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T04:54:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T04:54:12","slug":"at-midterm-convention-trump-vows-to-campaign-hard-for-paxton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/431361\/","title":{"rendered":"At midterm convention, Trump vows to campaign hard for Paxton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

DALLAS \u2014 When Attorney General Ken Paxton<\/a> took the stage at the GOP\u2019s midterm convention early Wednesday evening, he was quick to heap praise on President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe press, the courts and the establishment all tried to take President Trump down, but he\u2019s won every single time,\u201d Paxton told conventiongoers at the beginning of his speech. \u201cHe\u2019s delivered more for this country than anyone before, secured victories for America that no other president could, and always stood up for Texas. Thank you, Mr. President!\u201d<\/p>\n

And when Trump took the stage for his keynote address to close out the night, Paxton was the first candidate he mentioned by name, pledging to support the attorney general on the campaign trail. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be coming back to Texas, because we have to elect Ken Paxton,\u201d Trump said, drawing big cheers from the crowd at the American Airlines Center. \u201cIf I have to, I\u2019ll come back twice or three times. You\u2019ll say, \u2018Get this guy out of here!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But the honor of being Trump\u2019s top-of-mind candidate came with a catch \u2014 the president praised Paxton\u2019s record while belittling his appearance in equal measure. Trump warned that his riffs on Paxton might be offensive and were not part of his planned remarks. Mimicking aides who begged him not to go there \u2014 after he\u2019d ripped Paxton\u2019s looks at multiple points in recent weeks \u2014 Trump could not help himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome may not like the way he dresses \u2014 although tonight he looked very spiffy in his blue suit, I must tell you,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI don\u2019t. They may not like the way he talks. I can see that.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the trail, Paxton sometimes refers to the similarities between himself and Trump \u2014 both are beloved by the GOP base and, as Paxton frames it, victims of political persecution in the impeachments and indictments they have each survived. <\/p>\n

Trump chose to emphasize different similarities.<\/p>\n

\"TexasTexas Attorney General and Republican nominee for U.S. Senate speaks at the 2026 Republican Convention in Dallas on Sept. 9, 2026. Eddie Gaspar\/The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people don\u2019t like the way I look either,\u201d the president said. \u201cYou may not like the way he looks. But here\u2019s the thing: In the history of Texas, he is the single greatest attorney general you\u2019ve ever had, and maybe the top attorney general in the whole United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paxton was the only Senate candidate the president mentioned by name, until he got around to some others on the backend of his nearly two-hour speech. Trump himself is not on the ballot this fall, and part of the rationale for the first-of-its-kind convention is to highlight the Republicans in battleground races before an audience of national donors and supporters. The convention is occurring in Paxton\u2019s backyard, amid a historically competitive Texas Senate race in which polling averages have Democrat James Talarico<\/a> narrowly leading.<\/p>\n

Trump \u2014 whose governing trifecta in Washington is on the line \u2014 pledged to visit every swing distrct and state this fall. Across his speech, he was blunt about his mission to inject himself in the midterms, with the implicit point that Republicans will need to activate their Trump-loving voters who tend to skip the non-presidential years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u201dm asking you to pretend that I\u2019m on the ballot \u2014 I\u2019m on the ballot \u2014 just one more time,\u201d Trump said. \u201cBecause if we lose, you\u2019re going to lose your border, you\u2019re going to lose your tax cuts, you\u2019re going to lose your safety and security, you\u2019re going to lose your wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The party in power historically sustains losses during midterms \u2014 a trend Trump acknowledged Wednesday night and which plagued the second half of his first term. But Trump\u2019s efforts to buck the trend, by turning out lower-propensity voters, comes with a potential pitfall.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s national approval rating<\/a> reached a low of 32%, per a weekend survey from the Financial Times, and sat at 43% in Texas in the Texas Politics Project<\/a>\u2019s August poll. Democrats are hoping to sink down-ballot GOP candidates, including in Texas, by tying the president around their necks.<\/p>\n

\"IllinoisIllinois Gov. JB Pritzker speaks a press conference in Dallas as part of Democrats\u2019 counter-programming ahead of the 2026 Republican Convention in Dallas on Sep. 9, 2026. Eddie Gaspar\/The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

\u201cThis bizarre Republican midterm convention here can\u2019t paper over the fact that Republicans have done nothing to earn your vote,\u201d Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said alongside a cohort of Texas Democrats at a news conference Wednesday morning. \u201cNothing Republicans say over the next two days is going to change how clinically deranged and out of touch the GOP has been, and they chose the wrong place to hold this crime show of theirs because a new generation of candidates is rewriting the rules of Texas politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Trump believes he can outrun political history, and said the midterm convention is kicking off a campaign barnstorm to do so. And he promised voters a $5,000 dividend for every adult citizen if Republicans hold both chambers of Congress \u2014 a proposal that would be extraordinarily expensive and difficult to drive through what\u2019s sure to be a narrowly divided Congress no matter who\u2019s in control. Trump has made a handful of similar promises over the first half of his term and has yet to send out<\/a> any checks.<\/p>\n

Beyond Trump<\/p>\n

Across six hours of programming Wednesday, Republicans stuck to a steady script: dubbing their opponents as socialists and radicals, often by casting the party\u2019s most progressive voices as emblematic of the entire Democratic Party. <\/p>\n

Talarico received a handful of mentions from the stage. He was derided by National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott, Flower Mound Rep. Brandon Gill<\/a> and by Paxton himself.<\/p>\n

Talarico did not escape Trump\u2019s comedy routine either \u2014 \u201che\u2019s a weird looking dude,\u201d the president riffed \u2014 before running through some of Republicans\u2019 frequent hits on the Austin Democrat. Trump derided Talarico\u2019s past comments on capitalism, Christianity and transgender kids in an aside that ran for three minutes, re-upping the same remarks featured in clips frequently circulated online by Paxton allies. <\/p>\n

Talarico has referred to some of his past comments as cringey and said they \u201cmissed the mark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump also riffed on the popular Republican talking point that Talarico is a vegan \u2014 he is not \u2014 saying that the Democrat \u201cwas recently seen having a barbecue and eating a lot of meat \u2026 and then he was seen running backstage to a room and throwing up all over.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Talarico was far from the only villain for Republicans on Day One of the convention, which functioned as essentially a long-running campaign rally. Other targets included former President Joe Biden, former vice president Kamala Harris and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Speakers and video montages displayed on the big screen repeatedly picked on Democrats running to the left of Talarico \u2014 including democratic socialist streamer Hasan Piker and Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El Sayed \u2014 and perennial adversaries like Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.<\/p>\n

\"NotedNoted Democrats are pictured behind Ally Raskin as she speaks at the 2026 Republican Convention in Dallas Wednesday. Manoo Sirivelu for The Texas Tribune<\/p>\n

The midterm convention was unique, but Trump\u2019s speech was vintage campaign material. He bragged about the size of his three victories in Texas, falsely claimed he won the 2020 presidential election and spent significant time hitting his signature issues, including the border \u2014 long a point of GOP electoral strength in Texas.<\/p>\n

Touting the ongoing effort to build a border wall, Trump shouted out Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a> and Texas\u2019 two senators \u2014 including Sen. John Cornyn<\/a>, whom he\u2019s had a frosty relationship with since endorsing against him in the primary \u2014 for helping with the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee, I\u2019m being very nice,\u201d Trump said. \u201cTed Cruz<\/a> worked very hard on the wall, and so did John Cornyn. So did John Cornyn. They both did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kayla Guo contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61695,2133,145,392,2135,3309,1967,2424,7883,27,29,28,6473],"class_list":["post-431361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-border-wall","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-greg-abbott","tag-james-talarico","tag-john-cornyn","tag-ken-paxton","tag-republicans","tag-ted-cruz","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-well-a-homepage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}