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For more than a year, Republicans beseeched President Donald Trump’s advisers in the White House with a simple ask: if he couldn’t find his way to endorsing Sen. John Cornyn, could he at least keep his mouth shut?

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Of course, he could not. Trump last week endorsed Cornyn’s primary opponent in Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and on Tuesday Paxton made it through his contentious, costly run-off and into the general election this November. Senate Republicans spent $90 million on defending their amiable colleague and sinking the scandal-soaked Paxton. They failed, and are now left with the jarring reality that they had hoped to avoid: $250 million. That’s the internal price tag being circulated among Republicans for the task of helping Paxton to hold the seat—all at the expense of chasing flipping Democratic seats in places like Georgia, Michigan, or New Hampshire.

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Trump’s latest intra-party purge may end up being a bigger deal than some of his others of late. Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in almost 40 years. If Republicans end up investing a small fortune to help Paxton defeat Democrat James Talarico and still come up short, it would be a stunning end to the longest Democratic dry spell in the nation, and Trump would take a good share of the blame.

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It’s no exaggeration to say that Establishment Republicans are steamed that Trump’s pettiness is going to take as much as a quarter-billion dollars off the map simply because the President didn’t think Cornyn was MAGA enough, voting record be damned. Cornyn handled the nose-count for Trump’s first term, helped him confirm both Cabinets and all three Supreme Court nominees—all while voting with Trump 99.2% of the time, a number that makes him more loyal than Texas’ other Senator, Ted Cruz.

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