John Cornyn's Staffing Fiasco Is Unbelievably Revealing

Cornyn's former staffer, Jacob Smith, served for five years as his deputy legislative director and policy advisor. Now, he decided that he needed to join the Talarico campaign to help the “everyday people” of Texas.

“I’ve worked for Republicans like Senator Cornyn my entire career, but this year I’m proud to be joining James Talarico’s campaign,” Smith, who is now serving as Talarico’s deputy policy director, said in a statement. “Instead of playing partisan politics, Talarico speaks to the needs of everyday people who day in and day out work too hard for too little. In the Senate, James will fight to lower costs for all 31 million Texans, whether they’re Republicans, Democrats, or independents, so that Texans of all ages have a fighting chance at the American Dream of starting a family, owning a home, and leaving a little behind for their children.”

Sounds like you empowered a real winner here, Johnny.

A common phrase in D.C. circles, which was popularized during the Reagan years, is that “personnel is policy.” Most of the time, the people promoting the term are doing so to advocate for the hiring of competent staff. That’s a sound piece of advice, but the ideological allegiance of your staff is just as important. What use is a staffer who isn’t invested in advancing the interests of the people who brought your boss into office?

Because Cornyn has done nothing to earn a charitable interpretation of his actions, onlookers can only be left to assume that the hiring of a person who would completely turn on the GOP ticket to support a guy as radical as Talarico wasn’t in error. It's not like the MAGA-aligned staffers would leap at the opportunity to work for a Democrat just because their boss is about to be out of a job in a few months.

Perhaps if Cornyn didn’t attempt to tank the confirmation of Attorney General Todd Blanche, didn’t advocate for open primaries to allow Democrats to influence Republican politics, or wasn’t running an aggressive demoralization campaign on the SAVE Act, I could have chalked this up to his team getting hoodwinked by a malicious D.C. climber. With Cornyn’s actions laid out in front of us, recent or otherwise, this being a mistake would be an unbelievably naive understanding of events.

As Pat Adams pointed out, only 30 percent of Hill staffers said that they would support Trump in 2016. Do you seriously think that any of those 30 percent were being employed by offices like Cornyn’s? Or do you think that it’s far more likely that these are the types of people who shirked the Grand Old Party the moment that they realized the gig was up and the MAGA movement was here to stay? How about the 20 percent who actively claimed that they were going to back Clinton?

In an October 2016 poll of Capitol Hill staffers, only about 3 in 10 Republican aides who responded said they planned to vote for Donald Trump.

Nearly 1 out of 5 said they’d vote for Hillary Clinton.

What are the chances this squish was one of them? https://t.co/ur5zWzCoX5 pic.twitter.com/yv1ayWKWL4

— Pat Adams (@PatAdams96) August 18, 2026

The midterms are going to prove to be an extremely important election. Trump has culled many of the RINOs in the Republican Party during the primary season. Tried and true, America First politicians like Ken Paxton are finally on the ballot. RINOs are begging for a bloodbath for Republicans in the midterms so that they can attempt to retake control of the party. A loss for Trump and the American people means that they can get back to kicking their feet up and accomplishing nothing, or acting as Beautiful Losers in consequential elections.

The grassroots patriots will have to remind them that their time is over.