After profane repost slamming GOP, Trump heads to Texas-sized fundraiser

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump jets to Texas on Thursday to shovel more campaign cash into the Republican Party’s massive midterms war chest — even if he has been critical of some GOP lawmakers and reluctant to spend on competitive races.

Trump is slated to headline a big-dollar Republican National Committee fundraiser and stump for GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton, the Texas state attorney general who defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in a primary this year. The scandal-prone Paxton is in a tight race with state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee.

RNC officials ended July by touting the $19.4 million the organization raised last month, a record one-month total that left it with just over $130 million on hand even before Thursday’s Houston fundraiser is set to bring in a glut of donations. It stands to cost some couples as much as $443,000 to attend, according to one report that was not disputed by the RNC.

The haul will only add to the RNC’s available funding — as well as the $400,684,172 the Trump-affiliated MAGA Inc. PAC had on hand at the end of July, according to Federal Elections Commission data. It is not clear which midterm GOP candidates and races RNC, Trump and MAGA Inc. officials intended to invest in.

Trump last week bragged to reporters as he left Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for a political rally for Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., that several political organizations affiliated with him were flush with cash — but he didn’t specify races on which he would spend.

“Well, I’ve raised a lot, and nobody knows what it is, but I will tell you, it’s about $850 million. And I’ll be spending a lot of that money for — and my own money — but I’ll be spending a lot of that money for candidates that I think are good, Republican candidates that I think are good,” he said.

Federal elections data shows MAGA Inc. officials did spend on behalf of Graham in her primary runoff battle with five-term Rep. Ralph Norman, spending more than $827,700 on phone calls and text messages to voters in the days before Graham’s Tuesday victory.

In a statement last week touting Republicans’ 2026 fundraising advantage over Democrats, National Republican Campaign Committee spokesman Mike Marinella contended that “House Republicans are building a war chest. Democrats are building a socialist bailout fund.”

Having a cash advantage is one thing, but spending it on competitive races is another. MAGA Inc.’s last independent expenditure on behalf of a Republican candidate came with a pair of $8,950 text message buys on March 9. Those went to boost now-Rep. Clay Fuller during the final weeks of his successful special election in Georgia’s 14th District, which was vacated when Marjorie Taylor Greene left Congress.

GOP strategist Douglas Heye said Wednesday that among Republican candidates and campaign officials, “the frustration is real — both in that they’ve been sitting on it for so long and what the ultimate messaging may be.”

One GOP donor told Politico the “general view” in Republican circles is that it’s “Trump’s responsibility to bankroll” Paxton’s general election campaign since he opted to endorse him over Cornyn, upsetting some Senate Republicans.

Chapin Fay, a New York-based Republican strategist, said Thursday that “national money always moves in waves as outside groups build up resources early and spend heaviest in the closing stretch once the map is set and media markets tighten.”

“That’s true of every cycle, every committee, every party. I’d expect to see the bulk of it move in the six to eight weeks before Election Day, when it does the most good and the final political map shakes out,” he added. “At two weeks before Labor Day, there is plenty of game left this cycle.”

‘Legitimately pissed off’

The intraparty tensions cut both ways. Trump on Wednesday reposted a social media post criticizing GOP lawmakers, initially posted by Matt Van Swol, a former Energy Department nuclear scientist-turned-conservative influencer.

“I don’t think the GOP fully grasp how badly they are f*****g up right now. I’m talking to people who normally have ZERO interest in politics who are legitimately pissed off,” Van Swol wrote. “They are not seeing the major reform they thought would happen and are REALLY MAD about it ...

“I’m very worried the GOP is sleepwalking toward a midterm reckoning they don’t see coming,” he added. “People are pissed off that they voted Trump into office and then the GOP continues to slow-walk every reform people want.”

Outgoing White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked by reporters Thursday morning if that repost meant the president was washing his hands of helping GOP candidates. She replied that Trump was “wholeheartedly committed to helping Republicans across the board retain the majority.”

The president has often appeared more interested in his own projects, like his White House ballroom and helipad, and events like Sunday’s IndyCar Freedom 250 Grand Prix on the streets of Washington, D.C. He also has panned Senate Republicans who oppose votes on his prized elections overhaul legislation.

Trump is set to headline the Houston event about 48 hours after the polls closed in South Carolina, with Graham riding his endorsement to a narrow win over Norman. The president was in high spirits the next morning during a telephone interview with conservative radio and podcast host Glenn Beck, before taking a victory lap on social media.

“Ralph Norman had the look of a good Congressman (Not great, but good), but ruined his career when he endorsed Nikki Haley,” the president wrote on social media, referring to the former South Carolina governor who was his first United Nations ambassador — before she criticized Trump while running against him in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.

Polling raises questions about his coattails elsewhere, showing his approval underwater in states that will decide the midterms.

Trump’s approval rating was underwater in 47 states in a YouGov-The Economist survey released last week, with only three deeply red states — Wyoming, Idaho and West Virginia — giving him positive approval ratings.

‘Lingering resentments’

That means the head of the Republican Party is heading into the homestretch of the midterm campaign season with negative approval levels in all six states with Senate races that the Cook Political Report lists as toss-ups: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas. The same goes for three other competitive Senate races the nonpartisan organization projects as leaning toward Democrats: Georgia, North Carolina and New Hampshire. Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales lists those three states as “tilt” Democratic.

Trump is expected in the coming weeks to keep up his pace of one campaign stop per week.

Jessica Taylor, a Cook Political Report analyst, wrote in a recent analysis that “the battle for the Senate is about to intensify ahead of the traditional Labor Day starting gun.”

“Republicans still retain a structural advantage given the partisan challenges of the map, and Democrats still need almost every key race to break their way,” Taylor wrote. “In a wave election akin to 2006, even states that ... Trump won by double digits could move within Democrats’ reach. That’s what we see happening in Texas and Iowa.”

Political analysts at the University of Virginia on Wednesday shifted the Texas Senate race from leaning Republican to a toss-up.

“National Republican money — the sort of cavalry that has bailed out shaky nominees in other states — has been slower to arrive for Paxton, who has badly trailed Talarico in candidate-to-candidate fundraising,” UVA’s J. Miles Coleman wrote in a Wednesday analysis.

“Part of that may reflect whatever lingering resentments some in the party may hold still towards Paxton after he ousted (Cornyn),” Coleman added. “Some of it may simply be GOP resources being sent to states that are higher priority or less expensive. Either way, national Republicans will need to pour in tens of millions down the stretch — who does it, when it happens, and what it changes represent the biggest questions in this race.”