WASHINGTON — Texas Sen. John Cornyn says it’s time for the Republican party to dump former President Donald Trump and his destined-to-fail bid for a White House return.
But Cornyn also has attacked the criminal charges against Trump for alleged mishandling of classified documents as the result of a politically motivated double standard.
His approach reflects the tricky path leading Senate Republicans must navigate as they try to push Trump aside without enraging a party base filled with his ardent supporters.
In an interview at the Capitol last week, Cornyn was pressed on the potentially competing positions: that it’s time for the Republican party to move on from Trump and that the charges against him are the result of a biased Department of Justice.
“You don’t think both can be true?” Cornyn responded.
Cornyn last month became one of the most prominent Republicans publicly arguing that Trump’s inability or unwillingness to appeal beyond his core base spells doom for his 2024 comeback White House bid.
When Trump was indicted on 37 felony counts stemming from his alleged mishandling of classified documents, Texas’ senior senator offered reporters a concise but pointed assessment of the charges: “It’s not good.”
And yet Cornyn took to conservative talk radio the next day deploying common GOP talking points that Trump has been unfairly targeted. He told Hugh Hewitt that as president Trump was “under attack” by then-FBI director James Comey and the Justice Department and also serving under the shadow of a special counsel.
“He lived through … two different impeachment trials in the United States Senate, and now this,” Cornyn said of the recent indictment. “And then President Biden and Hillary Clinton and others seem to get off scot-free. That’s very troubling, I think, to a lot of people.”
Such statements are music to the ears of Trump supporters who feel their establishment-rocking champion has gotten a raw deal throughout his political career.
But in the interview, Cornyn also stuck to his assertions that Trump can’t win a general election.
“Anybody who’s running a campaign understands that primaries and general elections are very different,” Cornyn said. “In general elections, you have to appeal to a broader audience. And that’s … what the president doesn’t appear to try to do. So the question is, do you want to win or not?”
The Trump campaign responded to Cornyn’s anti-Trump talk last month by blasting him as part of the “deep state.”
That attack came despite the fact that Cornyn regularly had Trump’s back during his presidency, voted to acquit him at both of his impeachment trials and boasts overall conservative credentials.
Cornyn went further Thursday than he had previously in criticizing Trump’s alleged conduct in the documents case, but kept coupling it with the kind of “what about Biden” language used often by Republicans in the wake of the indictment.
“It says he violated the law multiple times. I have a problem with anybody violating the law,” Cornyn said of the indictment. “I also have a problem with President Biden … if he violated the law. So the main principle is that the same laws ought to apply to everybody equally.”
While classified documents from Biden’s years as vice president and senator were found at his Delaware home and an office, he did not resist efforts by the FBI and National Archives to retrieve them.
Cornyn’s fellow Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, has criticized the indictment in sharper terms, saying on his podcast that it’s “garbage” from a “thoroughly corrupted and weaponized Department of Justice.”
Cal Jillson, professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, said Cruz has always been a “partisan knife-fighter” in contrast to Cornyn, who has sought to cultivate the profile of a “measured, thoughtful, careful elected official.”
“He’s always had a much different view of himself, of the Senate and his role as a senator than Cruz has,” Jillson said.
Cornyn also faces political considerations of his own as he tries to at least preserve the option of seeking re-election.
He was a key player in writing the bipartisan gun violence law enacted last year in the wake of the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde - the most significant measure of its kind in decades.
HIs work on the measure earned him boos at the state convention and official rebukes from county parties. He has defended the law as protecting both the safety of schoolchildren and the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.
His support for other bipartisan compromises, such as the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill at the end of last Congress, intensified criticisms from the far right that he’s a RINO, or “Republican in name only.”
Coming to Trump’s sort-of defense by complaining about biased prosecutions helps balance his anti-Trump talk for the base, Jillson said.
Jillson noted that Cornyn is not up for re-election until 2026 so he has some space to say things that are in the party’s long-term interest — i.e., that Trump is yesterday’s news and needs to be tossed aside.
Keeping those long-term party interests in mind could boost his future prospects in Senate leadership. Cornyn is among a trio of senior senators viewed as potential successors to Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell whenever the Kentuckian decides to retire.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has been vocal in Trump’s defense.
But most Senate Republican leaders have long been trying in vain to move past Trump. Now they face the possibility of Trump winning the party’s nomination despite being under criminal indictment.
Although bashing the prosecution of Trump as biased could it make it more difficult to ditch him, Cornyn says there’s still time for other candidates to surpass him.
“It’s still early and we’ll see,” Cornyn said. “The national numbers … don’t reflect the reality of what will be state-by-state primaries.”
Jillson compared Cornyn’s situation to what is facing Trump’s rivals for the 2024 presidential nomination.
Many of them have struggled to find a consistent line on Trump’s indictment, in some cases mixing criticism of his alleged conduct with a healthy dose of complaints about political bias in the Justice Department.
“They are trying to express concern about, reservation about Trump’s behavior without going after him so directly that they would alienate the Republican base electorate,” Jillson said.
