U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks to the media before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., en route to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, August 21, 2026.
Defending Karl Rove isn't something that comes easily to anyone who observed his Machiavellian machinations during the second Bush administration. But whatever guilt he may bear from that era, the political strategist his boss called "Turd Blossom" is getting a bum rap from the current president.
Evidently Donald Trump wants to blame Rove for the impending Republican disaster in Texas, where James Talarico now looks like he can edge Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate race. Losing the Lone Star State would be an epoch-making event for the GOP -- and in a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump is already attempting to deflect blame for the disaster.
At this point it must be said, in order to avoid inviting bad juju, that the current opinion polls cannot predict what will happen in Texas or any of the midterm elections next month. But what can be said with great confidence is that should Paxton and a host of other Republican Senatorial nominees suffer such a momentous loss, the fault will not lie with Rove or any other MAGA scapegoat.
That responsibility will fall squarely on Trump, whose ranting and raving will achieve nothing except to reinforce the widespread sense that he is losing the plot. Whatever the ultimate results may be, Republicans now face the likelihood that they will lose dozens of House seats and the possibility that they will lose the Senate too -- an unexpected set of perils that can only be attributed to one man (along with his eager stooges).
Trump proclaimed that Rove and Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the incumbent ousted in the primary after he endorsed Paxton, "are doing everything possible to make it hard for Ken Paxton to win." But Trump unintentionally revealed the real obstacle for Texas Republicans in that post's delusional description of Paxton as "the Greatest Attorney General in the History of Texas, and one of the Best in the United States." In fact, Paxton is a credibly suspected crook who narrowly escaped removal from office by the Texas legislature -- and whose own staff thought he should be prosecuted for corruption.
Beyond all that, Paxton campaigns under the shadow of Trump himself, a president who won Texas by a wide margin and now suffers negative approval ratings there.
None of this would have happened if Trump had merely stifled his own dislike of Cornyn and his irrepressible impulse to promote any politician who kisses his rump with sufficient gusto.
If the Republicans lose any of other battleground Senate races -- again underlining if -- then Trump will assuredly assign culpability to someone else, just as he has resisted answering for any failure, bankruptcy or defeat throughout his long life. But in each and every case -- if the Republican loses -- there will be nobody else to hold accountable.
Look at the two races that the Senate Republican leadership has apparently abandoned as hopeless by canceling millions of dollars in advertising. Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent, was seen as highly vulnerable when the cycle began last year. But that was before Trump intervened to tilt the Republican nomination to Rep. Mike Collins, a tainted politician under investigation by the House Ethics Committee and seemingly surrounded by white supremacists on his staff and campaign.
Or consider North Carolina, where Trump first drove GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, a decent bet for reelection, into retirement -- and then pushed the nomination to Michael Whatley, a party hack with no record of accomplishment. Best known for screwing up the state's recovery from Hurricane Helene, Whatley has wrecked his own chances -- despite Trump's fulsome description of him as "a great man" and "a great leader."
As for the incumbent Republicans whose tenure now seems threatened, they too can trace their woes to Trump. Without his burdensome presence around their necks, GOP senators like Ohio's Jon Husted, Kansas's Roger Marshall and Nebraska's Pete Ricketts surely would have cruised into another term without a drop of sweat.
They all may win on Nov. 3. Yet should they lose, or win by a razor-thin margin, everyone except Trump will understand why -- and that will underscore just how gravely he has damaged his own party and the country.