Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) abrupt conversion to support eliminating the filibuster if necessary to pass President Donald Trump’s agenda lasted for about a cup of coffee.
Within hours of the New York Post publishing an op-ed Wednesday under Cornyn’s name pledging to do whatever it takes to get Trump’s priority legislation passed, Cornyn was recorded in the Capitol backtracking his purported op-ed position.
“I support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary for us to get the SAVE America Act and homeland security funding past the Democrats’ obstruction, through the Senate, and on the president’s desk for his signature,” Cornyn crows in the op-ed, seemingly reversing a fervently held position on the filibuster.
Yet by 10:00 a.m., just hours after publication, an agitated Cornyn backtracked before escaping into a Capitol elevator, even raising his hand to block the reporter’s camera.
Cornyn told an NBC News reporter to “go away” when asked about his new filibuster position, disputing his own op-ed’s claim that he would do “whatever changes may prove necessary.”
“I said I’d be open to reforms,” Cornyn shot back to a question about “nuking the filibuster,” answering further attempts to clarify his position with “I think we’re through. Go away.”
NBC News captured Cornyn blocking its camera with his hand, an image likely to intensify grassroots opposition to Cornyn and skepticism of his empty election season parroting of MAGA talking points.
Cornyn has come under intense pressure regarding his tight hold onto the filibuster, an archaic holdover of a Senate long dead.
On March 3, Cornyn finished around a point ahead of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a popular MAGA-aligned candidate who has proven seemingly invincible to establishment attacks. The two are heading to a runoff May 26.
Paxton, after Trump said he would endorse one of the candidates in the runoff and ask the other candidate to drop out, selflessly stated he would consider dropping out of the race voluntarily if Cornyn would do what is necessary to get the SAVE America Act to Trump’s desk.
That pledge and the grassroots uproar of support it sparked seem to have held off a Trump endorsement, for now.
But Paxton’s pledge highlighted Cornyn and other establishment Republicans’ desire to keep the filibuster in place until Democrats inevitably, as they’ve long promised, eliminate it entirely.
The pressure clearly forced the floundering Cornyn’s Wednesday op-ed.
Yet, Cornyn’s inability to maintain the newfound stance championed in his op-ed – even for a few hours – is perplexing. The endangered Texan likely has a long leash from Thune to send whatever filibuster message is necessary for his electoral prospects.
With 53 Republican senators, it likely would take 50 plus Vice President JD Vance – who can break ties in the Senate – to alter or weaken the filibuster.
Thune, when asked on Wednesday about Cornyn’s filibuster position, responded, “Senator Cornyn is one of 53 Republican senators, and the opposition to nuking the filibuster runs very, very deep in our conference.”
Given that at least four Republican senators – retiring Mitch McConnell (KY) and Thom Tillis (NC), and moderates Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME) – have been vocal to their opposition, Cornyn likely could take whichever position he wanted during the election season without endangering his cherished filibuster or alienating himself from Thune, who defeated Cornyn in his own bid for majority leader in November 2024 but remains an establishment Republican ally.
Before his backtrack, Cornyn’s reasons for his newfound religion on the filibuster raised more questions.
“The Senate rules will change eventually, whether Republicans like it or not,” Cornyn wrote, implying the filibuster is heading to the dustbins of history at some point regardless of who pulls the trigger.
To justify his long-obvious statement, Cornyn cited an at-the-time well-publicized Schumer statement from August 2024 in which, as Cornyn wrote, “Schumer confirmed to reporters that Democrats mean to finish the job and kill the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold the next time they take the majority.”
Cornyn did not clarify why he maintained his support for the filibuster for over a year and a half after Schumer’s statement, waiting until just days after the beginning of a runoff that polls show he will lose, to glean the necessary information to make what he now implies is the obvious conclusion.
In addition to Cornyn’s abrupt in-person flip-flop from his written flip-flop, the op-ed’s markedly different style than Cornyn has exhibited speaking and writing throughout his decades long career raises question on whether or not Cornyn himself wrote it – or even read it.
Cornyn and his allies spent $70 million dollars in the lead-up to the runoff to run ads and mobilize an army of consultants from Washington to Austin whose livelihoods depend on clients like Cornyn – not Paxton, who spent only $4 million in the primary.
Those consultants and their polls know what voters want to hear, and as with any campaign, likely have the freedom to say what is necessary for a chance at victory.
But voters have long memories and are better at sniffing inauthenticity than credited by most Washington consultants, who look down upon the working classes they are paid to manipulate to the polls.
The op-ed authored by Cornyn says Texans “need leaders who get results. And results are exactly what I have been proud to help President Trump deliver during both of his terms.”
But as Breitbart revealed Friday, Cornyn’s record shows he has spent nearly a decade working to stop President Donald Trump and more than two decades undermining the conservative movement.
Cornyn defended the lawfare waged by Jack Smith and others against Trump, opposed his electoral bids, and worked to undermine his political career and agenda.
That record explains why the incumbent Cornyn’s millions, which made the Texas Republican primary the most expensive in the nation’s history, were unable to keep him from a runoff with the woefully underfunded Paxton.
But inside Cornyn’s long record displaying he is increasingly out of step with Texan voters, it is his filibuster bluster that could do him in.
Cornyn, in his op-ed, noted that the two Senators in the Democrat Caucus who opposed changing filibuster rules in 2022 were driven out of their party and into retirement.
In 2026, Cornyn might suffer a similar fate.
Bradley Jaye is Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.
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