O’Reilly predicts Paxton win: ‘Talarico is just too much’ for Texas

Political commentator Bill O’Reilly on Monday predicted that Texas Attorney General and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton will win his race against Democrat James Talarico, saying the latter “is just too much” for Texas.

“So if I had to go by my gut, I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I would bet that Paxton will win in Texas because Talarico is just too much for that state,” O’Reilly told “On Balance” host Leland Vittert on NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network. “He’s just too much. And Paxton is kind of smart just to hammer him and hammer him and hammer him because Paxton doesn’t really have much of a resume.”

O’Reilly remarked that Paxton became the GOP nominee in the race because Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) “wasn’t loyal enough” to President Trump to support his legislative priority, a GOP-led voter ID bill called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act.

Paxton, according to the former Fox News host, “is a MAGA guy down the lane, and so he got the endorsement.”

“I don’t know anything that Paxton’s done to improve the lives of Texans, as you well put it, and he’s done a lot of things that are dubious,” O’Reilly continued. “So in a normal race, he’d lose by a lot, but it’s not normal.”

The Texas attorney general, who has a polarizing 23-year record in public office, has faced a series of scandals. The Texas state House voted to impeach Paxton in 2023, when he faced 20 articles accusing him of bribery, abuse of power, interference in federal investigations and retaliation against whistleblowers. A conviction on even one article would have ousted him from office.

But Texas state senators voted to acquit Paxton later that year, with two of the Legislature’s 19 Republican senators siding with Democrats to convict him on some of the counts.

Talarico is facing a favorable electoral environment as November’s general election draws near, with Democrats leading Republicans on generic congressional ballots, Trump’s approval rating sitting near record lows, and the unpopular war in Iran stretching past the six-month mark late last month.

The election handicapper Decision Desk HQ , a partner of The Hill, forecast Talarico has a 55 percent chance of winning the race as of Sunday, with Paxton holding a 45 percent chance of succeeding Cornyn.

The incumbent senator lost to Paxton in a runoff primary election in May, with Paxton having received Trump’s endorsement and marking the second instance in the election cycle that an incumbent Republican lost their primary without the endorsement, following Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.).

In endorsing Paxton, Trump said in May that Cornyn “was VERY disloyal to me … didn’t fight hard enough for the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT.” The Texas senator also opposed the president’s call to eliminate the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act and dismissed the idea of adding it to a reconciliation package.