Trump leaned toward endorsing Cornyn. Then the leaks started — and Paxton made a ‘genius move’

By Alayna Treene, Lauren Fox, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump was gravitating toward endorsing Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn last week. But he and some top advisers grew frustrated after his intentions leaked to the press, sources familiar with the matter told CNN, and the plan stalled.

Then Cornyn’s opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, announced on Friday that if the Senate passed the president’s voting restrictions bill — something Trump has grown particularly fixated on in recent weeks — he would consider dropping out of the runoff race. Paxton specified the GOP should lift the filibuster to do so, an idea many Republican senators oppose.

White House officials viewed the ploy as a “genius move,” as one Trump official described it, and it kept Paxton in the mix, at least temporarily. Now, Trump has latched onto the idea of tying his endorsement to the passage of his high-priority “SAVE America Act” — which, among other things, would impose new voter ID requirements.

That’s a significant headache for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who sees a Cornyn primary win as an important pillar of keeping the GOP’s Senate majority, and for the larger party, which has already seen around $100 million sunk into a bruising primary campaign before the contentious, 12-week runoff has even started.

And while Trump has teased on social media that he’s endorsing in the runoff “soon,” and that he wants the other candidate to drop out once he does so, White House officials maintain that the president is not in a rush. Trump held out on an endorsement for the entire primary campaign, despite intense pressure campaigns from the Cornyn and Paxton camps as well as Senate GOP leaders.

Cornyn narrowly edged out Paxton in the primary race last week, but neither got the requisite 50% of votes to avoid a runoff. The deadline to withdraw from the two-man race is March 18 at 5 p.m. CT.

Now, egged on by Paxton’s ultimatum, Trump has found dangling a potential Cornyn endorsement to be a useful motivator for Senate GOP leaders, who have been unwilling so far to eliminate the required 60-vote threshold to advance the legislation. Since Democrats won’t back the bill, the only way it would clear the Senate is if Republicans change filibuster rules. The legislation has already passed the House.

For months, Thune and others have pushed Trump to endorse Cornyn, hoping to prevent a difficult Texas general election from siphoning away resources they want to use for other crucial Senate races. Paxton has a lot of baggage, including a since-settled securities fraud investigation, an impeachment by the state House and allegations of infidelity.

The White House and Thune’s office declined to comment. Politico first reported that Trump wanted to use his endorsement to pressure senators on the voting bill.

Cornyn seems willing to capitulate, at least. In an op-ed in the New York Post Wednesday, he said his colleagues should adopt “whatever changes … may prove necessary” to pass Trump’s voting restrictions bill — despite past comments opposing a change to filibuster rules.

“The survival instinct is a powerful one,” a GOP source who supports Cornyn told CNN, referring to the op-ed.

The Texas senator insisted Wednesday that his thinking had changed due to “the unprecedented obstruction by Democrats,” not to get Trump’s endorsement.

“I don’t know whether the president has any intention or not of making any endorsement. I would obviously welcome it. But the timeline, if or when it happens, is entirely up to him,” Cornyn said.

There’s no sign yet that Cornyn’s op-ed has moved Trump, according to the sources familiar with the matter, who is still dead set on seeing the “SAVE America Act” pass. Meanwhile, the president has grown particularly frustrated with Thune, the sources said, who has been publicly resisting Trump’s calls for Senate Republicans to nuke the filibuster.

The dynamic has put Trump and Thune, who have grown close throughout the president’s second term in office and speak several times a week, at odds on an issue Trump views as crucial to a GOP win in the midterm elections. In addition to new voter ID requirements, Trump also wants the bill to include restrictions on mail-in voting and a ban on transgender identity surgeries for minors.

“The president is hellbent on passing the ‘SAVE America Act,’” one senior White House official told CNN. “He expects his allies in Congress to get the job done.”

Some Trump advisers view Thune’s recent comments — he has repeatedly insisted that getting rid of the filibuster is an impossible task, though he plans to put Trump’s voting bill up for a vote next week — as giving many members of his conference an out to do nothing, one source familiar with the talks said.

“Sen. Cornyn is one of 53 Republican senators and the opposition to nuking the filibuster runs very, very deep in our conference, as you know,” Thune told reporters Wednesday morning.

Others are also quick to defend Thune, arguing his position represents a widely shared view among the Senate GOP.

“There is no path to success with a 60-vote threshold. There is no path to nuking the filibuster. So why don’t we spend our time more productively on things we can get done?” Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said.

Trump, addressing Thune’s reticence to gutting the filibuster on Wednesday, told reporters the South Dakota senator has “got to be a leader. He’s a leader, he’s got to get them.”

CNN’s Dana Bash and Arlette Saenz contributed to this report.

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