{"id":19589,"date":"2026-03-04T16:37:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T16:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/john-thune-urges-trump-to-endorse-john-cornyn-early\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T16:37:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T16:37:11","slug":"john-thune-urges-trump-to-endorse-john-cornyn-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/john-thune-urges-trump-to-endorse-john-cornyn-early\/","title":{"rendered":"John Thune urges Trump to endorse John Cornyn \u2018early\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Senate Majority Leader John Thune urged President Donald Trump on Wednesday to deliver a swift endorsement of Texas Sen. John Cornyn to potentially forestall what is widely expected to be an expensive and nasty primary runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.<\/p>\n<p>Thune told reporters he hasn\u2019t yet spoken to Trump since the election returns from Tuesday\u2019s primary came in but indicated he intends to personally redouble his efforts, saying Wednesday that \u201chopefully\u201d the president will give Cornyn his influential nod.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[If] Trump endorses early, it saves everybody a lot of money, and \u2026 10 weeks of a spirited campaign on our side that keeps us from spending time focusing on the Democrats,\u201d Thune said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf the president can weigh in it would be enormously helpful,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Thune and other Senate Republicans have been trying to nudge Trump for months to endorse Cornyn, who acknowledged last month that he didn\u2019t expect the president to weigh in before Tuesday night\u2019s election. The runoff is set for May 26, with the winner to face Democrat James Talarico, who avoided his own runoff Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Other Senate Republicans are also expected to renew their case for Cornyn to Trump after the four-term veteran exceeded expectations Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would encourage the president to endorse him,\u201d Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said Wednesday, arguing that Cornyn has the best shot of winning in November.<\/p>\n<p>As of Wednesday morning, Cornyn is narrowly leading Paxton with 94 percent of the votes counted, according to the Associated Press. Many polls had Cornyn trailing Paxton ahead of Election Day.<\/p>\n<p>Thune called it a \u201cgreat night\u201d for Cornyn. Other allies of the Texas Republican who were granted anonymity to speak candidly said his performance Tuesday means, in their view, a Trump endorsement is still a possibility.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senate Majority Leader John Thune urged President Donald Trump on Wednesday to deliver a swift endorsement of Texas Sen. John Cornyn to potentially forestall what is widely expected to be an expensive and nasty primary runoff against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Thune told reporters he hasn\u2019t yet spoken to Trump since the election returns [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}