The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 20 episode of The Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.Donald Trump just endorsed MAGA nutjob Ken Paxton in the Texas GOP primary for Senate. This all but ensures a weaker GOP nominee, which improves Democratic odds in Texas and makes a Democratic Senate takeover a little bit more likely. In fact, Republican senators were furious about what they regarded as a betrayal. But Trump made things clear in his endorsement: Paxton got it because he was loyal to Trump—the only thing that matters. Too bad, Republicans, this is the guy you hitched yourselves to. So does this mean Texas actually is gettable for Democrats, or is heartbreak looming once again?Sawyer Hackett, a Democratic operative who has worked on numerous Texas races and knows the state well, is going to walk us through all of it. Sawyer, thanks for coming on.Sawyer Hackett: Good to be with you, Greg.Sargent: So in a long Truth Social rant, Trump endorsed Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas. Trump called Paxton someone who has “always been extremely loyal to me and our amazing MAGA movement.” Trump also cited Paxton’s support for ending the Senate filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, which is a disgusting voter suppression bill. And Trump ripped Senator John Cornyn, the current GOP incumbent, as “not supportive of me when times were tough.” Sawyer, your reaction to that?Hackett: Yeah. I mean, you said it up top. This is all about loyalty, right? He mentioned Paxton’s loyalty to Trump in the first sentence of that multi-paragraph statement, goes on to talk about the filibuster. And this is kind of coming up in the context of him wanting to build this ballroom and overturn the parliamentarian’s ruling on the ballroom funding. So clearly this was all about Trump’s own personal wishes for this race. He wanted a sycophant in this race that he could control, that he could manipulate, and that’s what he’s going to get with Paxton.Sargent: It’s interesting that you talk about the larger context legislatively, because Senator John Cornyn, we should tell people, has opposed doing away with the filibuster. And so anybody who won’t wreck the system entirely for Trump has to go, basically, is the situation.Hackett: Yeah, Cornyn is someone who has voted with Trump 99 percent of the time. I mean, this is somebody who goes out of his way to post these kind of obsequious, subservient pictures of Trump and holding Trump’s book, constantly trying to flatter Trump and voting with Trump 99.2 percent of the time in the Senate. And he was not loyal enough to Trump. This is somebody who did not go far enough in his loyalty, his obsequiousness to Trump.On the other hand, you have someone like Paxton who—I mean, this is a guy who travels down to Mar-a-Lago as often as he possibly can. He’s probably scheduling tee times around Trump’s tee time just so he can have a chance of running into him on the links. I mean, it’s pathetic how these Republican primaries have essentially just become contests in who can bootlick Trump the most. And in Texas, in a state known for kind of independent, these Western cowboys who stand up for their values and fight for the things that they believe in, you have two men essentially competing for who can lick Trump’s boots the best. And clearly Paxton has come away winning that contest.Sargent: And he very consciously set out to do that. Punchbowl News reporter Andrew Desiderio posted on Twitter that this is the, quote, “nightmare scenario for Senate Republicans.” Sawyer, can you give us the case for why Paxton is weaker as a candidate than Cornyn is, due to the corruption, the extremism, and everything else?Hackett: Yeah, I mean, with Paxton, you have an extremely vulnerable candidate who is not only disliked by a lot of independents and Democrats in the state, but also by a fair number of Republicans. He’s somebody who’s been underwater on his approval rating for many, many years. He’s somebody who’s been impeached by a Republican-controlled legislature. He’s somebody who has been federally criminally indicted on multiple felony counts—securities fraud and bribery and many other things. And he’s somebody who has intentionally gone out of his way to make an enemy of people of color in the state, of women in the state, at a time when I think Democrats are starting to turn those coalitions back around in our favor. It’s only going to play into Democrats’ hands in November.I think that polling—head-to-head polling between Paxton and Cornyn as who would be the better nominee—I don’t necessarily think reflects the depths of a campaign, a vigorous campaign between two nominees where you’re going to have negative ads running constantly.