Trump: Abbott would have won if he ‘hadn’t become a RINO’

President Trump blasted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott late Tuesday for losing his reelection bid , accusing the incumbent of being a “RINO,” or Republican in name only.

“If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost,” Trump wrote on Truth Social . “He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!”

The three-term governor went down to defeat by a wide margin to his Democratic challenger, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) projected . Hinojosa led by 7.4 points as of Wednesday morning.

Had he won, Abbott would have been the longest-serving chief executive in the Lone Star State.

The Texas Republican oversaw a rapid expansion of the state’s population and economy as governor, which became a political issue for him in the campaign. Hinojosa often targeted him on the issue of data centers, which he later took a stricter stance on.

In August, Trump called it a “mistake” following Abbott’s announcement of a moratorium on new data center construction, pending a state audit.

On other issues, the governor has remained a staunch supporter of the president and the right. Throughout his campaign, he accused his Democratic rival of supporting Sharia law, a Muslim religious code, as well as open borders and gender surgeries for minors.

Abbott has also signed into law one of the strictest abortion bans in the country during his tenure.

The president has also called out other GOP lawmakers and pundits in the state as being RINOs, including former President George W. Bush’s White House adviser Karl Rove and outgoing Sen. John Cornyn (R).

Trump ultimately backed Cornyn’s challenger , Ken Paxton, in the Senate primary. Paxton lost to Democrat James Talarico by a strong margin Tuesday night.

And when Rove endorsed Democrat Jon Rosenthal in the race for Texas railroad commissioner against his controversial GOP opponent, the president tore into him on social media.

Democrats in Texas had not won a statewide race since the 1990s or swept the statewide races in a single election since the 1980s. That streak was broken Tuesday with every statewide Democrat prevailing by at least 4 points, according to DDHQ.