Trump Gives Away Game Behind His Texas Primary Endorsement

To be a Donald Trump–endorsed political candidate, you must possess many qualities: integrity. Empathy. Intelligence. A love of the United States and all who inhabit it.

Just kidding! You don’t have to have any of those things. You just have to suck up to him more than the other guy.

The president made that clearer than ever in a post to Truth Social Sunday, in which he explained the complex reasons behind his endorsement of Ken Paxton in the Texas Republican Senate primary.

Paxton was “very loyal to your favorite President, ME,” Trump wrote. “Ken’s opponent was VERY disloyal to me.”

Trump’s obsession with fealty over everything is quite pronounced in the case of Paxton, an awful person with a long history of scandals.

Paxton cheated on his wife, was impeached by the state House on corruption charges, and illegally helped donors by targeting their enemies as state attorney general. Last month, his office offered a sweetheart plea deal to a repeated child molester that would see the offender spend just one day in jail.

Paxton should never be able to get the endorsement of a sitting president. It’s not even like his Republican rival, John Cornyn, doesn’t suck up to Trump. But Paxton has given the president lavish, consistent support over the years. It’s as simple as that for our commander in chief.

Paxton will face Cornyn in a runoff Tuesday night that is projected to go Trump’s way. The winner will advance to the general in November against Democrat James Talarico, a progressive Christian with a quiet cadence and the face of a Boy Scout.

Talarico won a close primary of his own against Representative Jasmine Crockett in March. He will have an uphill battle in a state as red and as anti-abortion as Texas, but is actually ahead in recent polls. Election pundits such as Nate Silver are giving Talarico a good shot, particularly if the controversial Paxton wins Tuesday.

President Trump went on yet another Truth Social posting spree over the holiday weekend, sharing Facebook-style memes into the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday. This comes as he is set to get his third medical check up in 13 months at Walter Reed Medical Center on Tuesday. 

He began the morning with a stream of low effort, low quality memes that look straight out of the bot-filled comment section of any of Trump’s Truth Social posts. At 5:52 a.m., he criticized Obama’s Iran deal and then posted affirmations about being the “dealmaker in chief” and the “man who saved America. And at 6:01 a.m, he posted an AI meme depicting former President Joe Biden slumped over sleeping at his desk, melted ice cream in front of him, and Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leering behind him with an autopen—perhaps the worst post of them all given that Trump has fallen asleep on camera in a similar position countless times in his second term. 

Since Monday evening, Trump twice posted an image about how the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C., is larger than multiple skyscrapers—something that no one with real problems should care about, especially given that he’s comparing a pool in the ground to Ground Zero and the Empire State building. 

He also shared a basic oil painting of a suburban house with a white picket fence covered in American flags, captioning it “Trump’s America in 2026.” The image communicates virtually nothing while ignoring the fact that the reality of Trump’s America right now is extremely bleak. 

Trump then posted another meme, this time stating that Former President Barack Obama’s Iran strategy was just “pallets of cash,” while his grand solution is dropping bombs in the Gulf. Yet Trump is doing both—he’s reportedly considered offering Iran $20 billion for their uranium stockpiles and attacked Iranian ships on Monday. And there is still no real end to the war in sight, as warhawks from both the Democratic and Republican Party come out against Trump’s most recent proposed deal. 

The president’s strange posting marathons appear to be increasing as his approval ratings on the economy and the Iran war absolutely tank.  

Democratic Senator Andy Kim was met with force when trying to defuse tensions at an immigration detention center on Monday. 

Kim was pepper-sprayed, along with dozens of other protesters, outside of Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, Monday after visiting the center to look into reports of detainees on a hunger strike protesting poor conditions at the facility. Kim and other Democratic New Jersey officials were allowed to enter.

When Kim left the building, he saw that protesters had formed a human chain in front of the facility, and he said he tried to get in the middle of the situation to “de-escalate the situation” and avoid a “physical clash” after ICE said they planned to push vehicles through the crowd.  But then, Kim said, “that’s when [the agents] started to shoot at us with pepper balls as well as using the pepper spray.” ​A medic at the scene had to wash Kim’s eyes out with water. 

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that conditions at the facility were fine, claiming that detainees have access to phones, food, clean water, clothing, and medical care, and called the protesters “agitators.” 

“This is nothing more than a political stunt by New Jersey sanctuary politicians for fundraising clicks,” said acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauren Bis in another statement, denying that a hunger strike or “subprime conditions” exist at Delaney Hall. “These sanctuary politicians should be thanking ICE law enforcement for removing murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and drug traffickers from their communities.” 

Kim, who said he had to call DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to gain access to the facility, disputed that statement. The senator said he spoke to “as many detainees as possible,” who related “just the inhumane conditions.” 

“I talked with a pregnant woman who is not getting access to OBGYN health care in the way that she needs,” Kim told NJ.com. “I talked with a woman who actually had a miscarriage in Delaney Hall and was not given any medical support. I talked with an 18-year-old high school senior who just wanted to be able to graduate this month rather than being in a detention facility uncertain about what’s going to happen next in her life and being separated from her mom.”

The U.S. bombed several Iranian targets Monday, breaking its own ceasefire in the process.

American forces destroyed Iranian boats and missile launch sites, according to U.S. Central Command. The boats were reportedly attempting to lay more mines along the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman.

But the timing of the attack could not have been worse, as Iranian officials had arrived in Qatar just hours earlier for talks to end the war.

Iranian state media confirmed some of the attacks hit Bandar Abbas, an Iranian port city that is home to the country’s key naval and air bases. State media reported that explosions occurred in other cities, as well.

CENTCOM characterized the strikes in southern Iran as defensive, saying they were intended “to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.”

“Central Command continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing cease-fire,” CENTCOM spokesperson Captain Tim Hawkins said in a statement. Hawkins declined to elaborate on which ships were hit, where the targets were located, or where the other U.S. attacks took place.

In a lengthy Truth Social post Monday morning, hours before the strikes, Trump declared that the U.S. and Iran would either broker a “great deal for all or, no deal at all.”

“Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before,” the president warned.

In another post, Trump said that his deal would be “the exact opposite” of the Iran deal brokered by former President Barack Obama, although he added that “nobody has seen it, or knows what it is.”

Trump also noted that any potential deal to end the Iran war should come with a stipulation requiring Tehran to sign the Abraham Accords, normalizing diplomatic, economic, and security with Israel. Trump shared that he had spoken with the leaders of several Middle Eastern countries on Saturday, and opined that “it should be mandatory that all of these Countries, at a minimum,” sign the Abraham Accords “simultaneously.”

“Those Countries discussed are Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates (already a Member!), Qatar, Pakistan, Türkiye, Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain (already a Member!),” Trump wrote.

Tehran has said there will be no “retreat” in its fight against the United States. Trump’s first-term national security adviser John Bolton told CNN Monday that Iran had effectively played the White House by delaying the peace process.

“I don’t think the president understands the fanaticism of what’s left of the regime and the people in power. He is somebody who has spent his whole life making deals with people. He thinks everybody wants to make a deal on just about anything. That’s not what these people are into,” Bolton said.

“They can see that Trump is so palpably desperate to make a deal that he can declare to be a victory and that lowers prices of gasoline—and they’re playing him on that,” Bolton continued. “They’re stretching him out, they’re buying time. All of that works out in their advantage.”

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry—who for some reason is serving as President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Greenland—admitted Friday that the administration wants to take over the Arctic island for the oil.

Landry’s comments came after he traveled to Greenland uninvited last week, while the U.S. pressures Denmark to allow it to increase its military presence in the territory Trump has already essentially threatened to annex.

“Greenland needs the deal.… Greenland could be exporting two million barrels of oil a day right now,” Landry said on Fox News. “Think about what that could mean. Think about what kind of pressure that would relieve in the Strait of Hormuz. Think about what kind of leverage that would give the Western hemisphere and America.… We could have those barrels on production within 10 months or so.”

Landry also went on to mention rare earth minerals and the other various natural resources in Greenland.

“Ah yes. Oil. It’s always about oil and money,” Missouri congressional candidate Fred Wellman wrote on X. “Remember how it was for our ‘national security?’ No, it was for corporations to exploit the natural resources.”

Occupy Democrats also chimed in: “But Trump also said that because of Venezuela, we have more oil than we know what to do with.… So the Strait didn’t matter. NOW, we need Greenlands oil to offset the problems from Iran and Hormuz? What happened to more oil than anyone on earth?”

It isn’t hard to connect the dots here. Trump’s monthslong Greenland obsession has only been exacerbated by the war he started with Iran, which led oil prices to skyrocket after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Now Trump is looking to Greenland—and its oil and natural resources—as a way out of his own mess.