President Donald Trump returned to the Lone Star State on Tuesday to stump for Republicans with one week left until Election Day.<\/p>\n
Trump spoke at the Port of Corpus Christi<\/a> on Tuesday afternoon before heading to Lubbock for another rally on Tuesday night. This marks the President’s fourth trip to Texas since early September.<\/p>\n The President’s visit is part of a multi-state campaign blitz to energize Republican voters<\/a> ahead of next week’s midterm election. In particular, the President is trying to boost Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is in a competitive U.S. Senate race<\/a> with Democrat State Rep. James Talarico.<\/p>\n At the rally, Trump called Paxton the “best Attorney General in the history of the state of Texas” and said, “he’s one of the best in the country,” and argued Paxton deserves to be the next senator.<\/p>\n Trump painted Talarico as someone who is against Texas values and went after him for some of his past comments about social issues, including ones about dismantling capitalism and modern science, saying there are six genders.<\/p>\n “The only man standing between Texas and this raging lunatic is a man named President Donald J. Trump,” Trump said. “I need the help of Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate.”<\/p>\n Former Texas A&M quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny and former Texas Tech wide receiver and two-time Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots, Danny Amendola, joined the President for events in Lubbock and Corpus Christi.<\/p>\n The former players are part of an effort to mobilize voters who typically sit out the midterms, like the young men who helped send him back to the White House in 2024.<\/p>\n Those voters may be less inclined to vote when President Trump isn’t on the ballot, so the President has been encouraging his supporters to pretend he is on the ballot.<\/p>\n A survey by the Hobby School of Public Affairs<\/a> released Friday showed rural Texans supported Paxton over Talarico by more than two-to-one, 65% to 27%. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott led his Democratic challenger, State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, 66% to 29% among rural voters.<\/p>\n Two-thirds of rural voters said they have a favorable view of President Trump, 21 percentage points higher than the 46% statewide who view him favorably.<\/p>\n However, some younger voters and independent voters in rural areas said they are more likely to support Democratic candidates. Among rural voters ages 18-34, 50% support Hinojosa, while 36% support Abbott.<\/p>\n Democrats have big dreams in the Lone Star State this election cycle. They hope Talarico could win and become the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate seat in the state in more than 30 years.<\/p>\n The latest polling data<\/a> indicates that the two are neck and neck. Talarico has had a small but consistent lead over Paxton, but the polls have generally been within the margin of error, making it the most competitive statewide race in a long time.<\/p>\n “In the final days of this election, they are coming at us with everything they’ve got,” Talarico said on Saturday. “The billionaire mega donors, the super PACs, they have already spent $200 million to try to defeat us. That is. That is the most in any Senate race in American history, and more is on the way. They are scared. They are terrified. They see what we see that we’re about to win this election.”<\/p>\n Trump’s repeated visits are a sign that Trump and Texas Republicans are concerned about AG Ken Paxton being at the top of the ticket in Texas.<\/p>\n “Governor Abbott traditionally would have been trying to carry the ticket, but in fact, the Senate race is the first race that voters see on their ballot, and if they leave the Republican Party on that race, Abbott’s got to trust it or come back to him and then stay Republican as they move down the ballot,” SMU Political Science Professor Cal Jillson said. “We’ll see whether that happens because if Republicans leave the party for Paxton, that could open the door to Talarico.”<\/p>\n Asked about those concerns before boarding Air Force One for Texas on Tuesday, Trump said he wasn’t worried.<\/p>\n “I think he’s going to do very well. You never know, it’s politics, but you never know,” Trump said. “I think he’s going to do very well. Talarico’s going to get swamped because we have thousands. You know, they’ve been lined up for 3 days. You can see the crowds, nobody’s ever seen. This is like it was for the regular election; a midterm is usually not that exciting.”<\/p>\n On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance will hold a rally in the Lone Star State. He’ll be in Weatherford, an even deeper red part of North Texas than where President Trump was on Tuesday. In 2024, Parker County, where Weatherford is, voted for the President by 66 points.<\/p>\n These are all places the President and Vice President wouldn’t go if they were playing offense in an election cycle. If that were the case, they’d go to blue or purple states where they think they can make advances, but instead, they are spending the last week before Election Day in deep-red Texas.<\/p>\n “The fact that Donald Trump and JD Vance are going to deep red states Montana, Kansas, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, that means you’re playing defense, and your opponents are encroaching on your territory,” Jillson said. “It does not bode well that Trump is coming to Texas again. Texas should be locked up for Republicans by this point.”<\/p>\n In 2024, President Trump won Texas by 14 points over Former Vice President Kamala Harris. He won the areas where he held rallies on Tuesday, Lubbock and Corpus Christi, by 40 percentage points and 12 percentage points, respectively. Senator Ted Cruz defeated former Congressman Colin Alred by 37 percentage points and 6 percentage points in those two areas, respectively.<\/p>\n “President Trump knows that if the rural areas of Texas don’t turn out in traditional numbers, or better, then that high turnout in the major urban areas is going to swamp Republicans at the top of the ticket,” Jillson said. “So he’s trying to make sure that his most dedicated voters are turning out in traditionally Republican numbers.”<\/p>\n Jillson said political observers believe roughly 25% of the total vote must come from rural Texas and skew heavily Republican to offset the Democrats’ advantage in major cities, even if Democrats and Republicans tie or Republicans narrowly win the suburbs.<\/p>\n “You’ve got to win and win big in rural areas if you know you’re in trouble in the big cities,” Jillson said.<\/p>\n While Trump and Paxton hold a rally at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center, Talarico will also be in deep-red Lubbock on Tuesday night as part of a swing through Midland, Amarillo, and Lubbock. His campaign said it moved a planned rally from an alumni pavilion to the Fiesta Center, a performance and concert venue in Lubbock, because of high interest.<\/p>\n “James is honored by the excitement the people of Lubbock have shown towards his campaign,” Talarico campaign spokesperson JT Ennis said in a statement. “Due to high interest and RSVPs, our campaign needed to change venues to accommodate as many attendees as possible.”<\/p>\n The move to campaign in areas like Lubbock, Jillson said, suggests confidence from Talarico and his campaign, because the West Texas swing means the campaign is confident Democratic stronghold areas like Houston, Dallas and San Antonio are where they want them to be.<\/p>\n “You’ll want to go out to Lubbock not because you think you’re going to win there, but you’re going to cut the margin by which Republicans, Paxton, in this case, win in West Texas, in the Panhandle,” Jillson said. “If you feel like you’ve got your heartland sort of under control, you venture into the other guy’s territory, not to win it, but to cut the margin by which your opponent wins it.”<\/p>\n Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick urged Republicans at the rally to vote as soon as possible, not wait until Election Day to cast their ballots. He encouraged Republicans to convince their family and friends to vote as well.<\/p>\n “Some of them aren’t paying attention. Some of them think we can’t lose. Some of them think my vote’s really not important,” Patrick said. “This election could come down to less than 200,000 votes out of 10 million. That’s what it looked like in 2018. Remember, Ted Cruz won by 200,000 votes out of a little less than 10 million.”<\/p>\n The President also toured an oil tanker <\/a>carrying Venezuelan crude oil on Tuesday, alongside U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In a Truth Social post<\/a>, Trump said the United States will receive 1 million barrels of Venezuelan oil in Texas, and called it “the first shipment of BILLIONS of Barrels to come.”<\/p>\n The President did make some news during his speech in Corpus Christi. After the federal government denied a request for federal aid for the Hill Country after the flooding back in July, President Trump said on Tuesday he’ll make more FEMA funds available and will “work that out on Monday.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump returned to the Lone Star State on Tuesday to stump for Republicans with one week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168,170,169],"class_list":["post-478683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478683","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=478683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}