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Five Quick Things: The Grand Senate Bargain? | The American Spectator

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March 5, 2026
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Five Quick Things: The Grand Senate Bargain? | The American Spectator

I promised myself this edition of the 5QT would have emphasis on the Q.

Let’s see how we do.

1. The Art of the Deal in Texas?

In yesterday’s column discussing the utter weirdness of the Democrats’ gay-preacher Senate nominee in Texas, James Talarico, I floated a rumor that had been circulating that President Trump would endorse incumbent Republican John Cornyn in return for some specific performance by the Republican Senate Caucus. (RELATED: The Incredibly, Unacceptably Weird James Talarico)

Specifically…

No GOP incumbent in a contested primary is likely to survive the failure of the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, and the rumor in D.C. this week is that the GOP establishment has floated a deal to Trump that goes like this: He endorses Cornyn for reelection, and in return they’ll push the SAVE America Act through to his desk.

There are a lot of people out there who aren’t very happy with the prospect of that deal. On the other hand, one whose reaction to it indicates he doesn’t hate it is Cornyn’s Republican primary runoff opponent Ken Paxton, who likely wins over Cornyn if Trump does nothing…

Oh, my.

One of two things is happening here (or perhaps both; they’re not mutually exclusive).

Trump and Paxton could be in cahoots, and Paxton could be in line for a cabinet position — there are people who think Pam Bondi is probably out as attorney general soon and Paxton would fit the bill as the kind of aggressive, take-no-prisoners lightning rod replacement more or less ideal for the job — and so Paxton is offering to get out of the race and make his way to Washington through alternative means while forcing the mostly-useless Senate GOP Caucus which wants to re-elect Cornyn at all costs to do the right thing.

The other possibility, which could be true in concert with the first, is that Paxton is seizing on the rumor of a SAVE America Act deal to bait the hook for Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the rest of the underachievers — and when nothing is done to move the bill to Trump’s desk through demanding a talking filibuster, Cornyn’s electability in Texas collapses.

If that comes off as far-fetched, consider this Facebook post from Wednesday by syndicated radio host Michael Berry, who is about as authoritative a voice on Republican politics in Texas as it’s possible to find…

Trump had suggested that the candidate he doesn’t endorse ought to drop out. Paxton initially said he wouldn’t drop out if Trump endorsed Cornyn, noting that Team Cornyn spent $100 million to Paxton’s $4 million in the primary to post just 41.9 percent (to Paxton’s 40.7 percent). That induced a publicly huffy response from Trump, which came off as a little too on the nose — he said, “Well, that’s bad for him to say. That is bad for him. So maybe, maybe that leads me to go the other direction.”

Then, Paxton throws out the bait that if the rumored SAVE America Act deal is on the table, he will exit the race in order to get it passed, and now all eyes are on Cornyn. Would Cornyn be willing to drop out if Trump endorsed Paxton? Would Cornyn, who has signed on as one of 50 co-sponsors of the bill, be willing to guarantee a move to a talking filibuster in order to earn the endorsement (he can’t personally guarantee it, but he can prevail upon Thune to make it happen)? If he can’t or won’t do those things, it sure looks like John Cornyn is out for John Cornyn.

We’ll see how this shakes out. I find it fascinating, even though the contours of the deal are not sufficient to make me support it. If I’m Trump and they want my endorsement for Cornyn, I’m not just asking for specific performance on the SAVE America Act; I want a two-week Senate recess so that I can clear out my list of pending appointees by recess-appointing the whole lot of them — something which he should have already been able to do but has been prevented from doing by Republicans in the Senate.

Even that is a bit thin for the Cornyn endorsement. Cornyn isn’t good enough on his own to merit a fifth term in the Senate.

2. Kristie Noem Gets the Hook; Markwayne Mullin Moves in at DHS

Big news Thursday was that the Department of Homeland Security is getting a big change…

President Donald Trump is nominating Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin from Oklahoma as the next Homeland Security Secretary.

On Thursday, the second-term Republican decided to reassign Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as the special envoy for the Shield of the Americas.

Multiple reports circulated prior to the president’s social media post confirming her removal. Her testimony on Capitol Hill a day earlier is believed to have been the trigger.

In a Truth Social post, the president said Noem’s new position will be a part of his administration’s new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere, to be formally announced over the weekend at the Americas Counter Cartel Conference at the U.S Southern Command.

In his post, the president thanked Noem for her “service at ‘Homeland,’” saying she has “served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!).”

Mullin is expected to assume the new post “effective” March 31. Mullin has spent three years in the Senate after 10 in the House of Representatives. The president describes Mullin as a “MAGA Warrior.”

They’re making a big deal about the fact that Mullin only has an associate’s degree, and he’s the only Senate member not to have at least a bachelor’s degree. Which is a nice bit of credentialism that ignores his actual history — Mullin left school because his father got sick, and he took over the family plumbing business and turned it into a sizable commercial enterprise. Perhaps he should have taken time off from those achievements to sit in a classroom for another couple of years to get a piece of paper.

Why did Noem get bounced out at DHS? There were a number of reasons, it turned out, but a big one had to do with some rough testimony in front of the Senate.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) blew her up in particular…

Yikes. But there’s more…

Double yikes.

And apparently, that was that. You really don’t want to put words in Donald Trump’s mouth publicly like that.

Kennedy did have a quotable comment about Mullin’s appointment to replace Noem…

3. We’ve All Been Tucker Fans at Some Point, but This Isn’t Awesome

Saying that Chabad is brainwashing Donald Trump into attacking Iran is just weird, but that’s apparently what Tucker Carlson has to offer.

I go back to a defense of Carlson — wait, let me pull that back; it was a defense of Kevin Roberts — I made amid the controversy over Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes last year, in which there were a lot of vicious and divisive things said about the existence of that interview. My complaint was that I didn’t want to run off five million potential Republican voters who listen to Fuentes’s podcast if that could be helped.

And then Carlson started sounding like an ayatollah in training, which has his detractors calling him Tucker Qatarlson, a reference to his Middle Eastern trips and accusations that he’s on the Qataris’ payroll.

Which led to his disavowal by the president…

Further, we have this…

You want to just make all these people shut up for a while, at least until we can get past the Iranian operation. As I said in the first segment of the Spectacle podcast this week, whether you like this thing or you don’t, we need to all be in the same boat in seeking to achieve a satisfactory result there. (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 353: Is Operation Epic Fury Justified?)

But this kind of blood-libel BS makes it pretty much impossible to tamp this fight down. You don’t have to be a full-on Israel backer to recognize this as stupid talk.

And yeah, we still need to find a way to keep Fuentes’s audience from listening to that stupid advice. And I’m still for engagement and conversion rather than condemnation, though I’m open to ideas on how to do that when the “influencers” keep dashing further and further into the fringe.

4. The Marine Insurance/Strait of Hormuz Play

It’s not that the Iranians closed the Strait of Hormuz. They don’t have a navy anymore. They could conceivably shoot missiles or drones at ships traversing the strait, though, and that greatly slowed the traffic through that narrow passageway out of the Persian Gulf.

Why? Because the marine insurance markets in London pulled out of covering shipping in the region.

Trump did something very interesting in response…

Trump said that he has ordered the U.S. Development Finance Corporation to provide “political risk insurance and guarantees for the Financial Security of ALL Maritime Trade, especially Energy, traveling through the Gulf.”

“This will be available to all Shipping Lines,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

“If necessary, the United States Navy will begin escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, as soon as possible,” he wrote.

“No matter what, the United States will ensure the FREE FLOW of ENERGY to the WORLD,” he added. “The United States’ ECONOMIC and MILITARY MIGHT is the GREATEST ON EARTH — More actions to come.”

The effect of this, if it works out, could be to strip London of its central role in the highly-profitable marine insurance business. There are seven or eight insurance firms based in London that underwrite most of the world’s shipping, and those all emerged, generally, because the British Royal Navy was the guarantor of free access to maritime commerce.

Now it’s the U.S. Navy that fills that role.

And given the recent performance of the British government with respect to, well, everything, why wouldn’t the U.S. act to take that business away? Assuming the “special relationship” between us and the Brits has gone the way of Ceylon and Hong Kong and, apparently, soon, Gibraltar, that is.

It’s early, so there isn’t much indication of how this gambit will go. Worth watching, though.

5. Well, That Sure Didn’t Take Long

Abigail Spanberger is going to turn out to be well worth losing to for Republicans in Virginia, though the damage she’ll do on her way to political oblivion will likely be near-total. (RELATED: The Abigail Spanberger Bait-and-Switch)

How long has she been governor there? Two months? And already there’s this?

What a colossal scandal. The ads just write themselves.

I’d extend my condolences to the people of Virginia for what Spanberger is going to put them through, but then again… elections have consequences. When you’ve had enough of this insane AWFL governor, you know what to do.

READ MORE from Scott McKay:

The Incredibly, Unacceptably Weird James Talarico

Americans Are Skeptical of the Iran Strikes. That’s a Good Thing.

Ten Thoughts on Operation Epic Fury and Its Aftermath



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