Why are Matt Brasseaux and Steve Munisteri Betraying President Trump and Texas Republicans?

The president of the United States cannot possibly vet every state legislative endorsement. It is unreasonable to expect a man responsible for the border, inflation, foreign wars, and an all-out lawfare campaign against his administration to have the time or bandwidth to parse Texas House politics. Yet, ironically, it is precisely because Donald J. Trump has become the indispensable figure of American conservatism that his endorsements are sought with such desperation, and why, when they are misguided, the consequences are not just unfortunate, they are existential.

This is a story about bad counsel, not bad faith. There is no question that President Trump is acting in good faith when he lends his name and credibility to Republican candidates. But good faith, when channeled through the wrong advisors, becomes a weapon in the hands of those who privately loathe the very agenda the president champions. Nowhere is this truer than in the Texas House of Representatives.

To the casual observer, Texas is a Republican stronghold. The reality, however, is more Byzantine. The Texas House is controlled not by Democrats in name, but by Democrats in effect, enabled by a bloc of liberal and moderate Republicans who routinely betray their party, their voters, and the president who redefined it. These are not allies of Trumpism. They are the Republican incarnation of the Uniparty, and their grip on the Speaker’s gavel has yielded predictably disastrous results.

Take the current Speaker, Dustin Burrows. He was not the GOP Caucus’s choice. He was installed through an unholy alliance of Democrats and their Republican enablers, many of whom President Trump is now, bafflingly, being advised to endorse. These include Charlie Geren, Cody Harris, Jared Patterson, Ken King, Morgan Meyer, Angie Chen Button, Ryan Guillen, Drew Darby, Stan Lambert, and John Lujan to name just a few. All voted for Burrows, all voted to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, and all stand against the very MAGA agenda the president seeks to advance.

The last legislative session proved the point. Democratic priorities flourished. Conservative bills were buried. In one extraordinary episode, Senate Bill 2, a school choice bill that embodies Trumpian principles of parental empowerment and limited government, was dead on arrival in the Texas House. Only direct intervention from Trump himself resurrected it. Governor Abbott personally brought the president onto a call with House Republicans. Trump offered his endorsement in exchange for passage. The bill passed. But this episode should not be read as a triumph. It was a rescue mission. Trump had to strong-arm Republicans into supporting a policy they should have championed on day one. And the fact that these were the very Republicans his team now wants him to endorse is absurd.

It gets worse. Representative Cody Harris, whom Trump is reportedly poised to endorse, filed a sworn complaint seeking to criminally prosecute Republican Party of Texas Chairman Abraham George for, of all things, advocating that House Republicans honor the party’s own rules. The complaint, which alleges "intimidation" for reminding members of their duty to back the GOP Speaker nominee, is not just meritless, it is malicious. It is lawfare turned inward, a weaponization of ethics laws against the grassroots. That Trump would endorse the man behind it, while the target is the very chairman Texas conservatives elected to carry out their will, would be Kafkaesque if it were not tragic.

Why is this happening? The answer, it appears, lies with two men: Matt Brasseaux, Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Political Affairs, and Steve Munisteri, a senior advisor to Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Brasseaux is reportedly working closely with Munisteri to manage Trump’s Texas endorsements. But both men are part of the very establishment that has waged war on grassroots conservatism. Munisteri in particular, though once associated with Trump, has long since thrown in with the Austin political class. His proximity to the governor and his quiet but forceful presence at the Capitol has not gone unnoticed. And now, the architect of multiple efforts to keep the Texas GOP under establishment control is helping craft Trump’s endorsements? This is like hiring arsonists to run the fire department.

This arrangement has another poisonous consequence. Brasseaux’s office, multiple sources report, is actively lobbying to stop the Texas GOP from censuring the very RINOs Trump is being misled into endorsing. Why? Because a censure vote could render these candidates ineligible to appear on the GOP primary ballot. That, in turn, would reveal the absurdity of Trump’s endorsements and embarrass the White House. So instead of fixing the endorsements, Brasseaux and Munisteri are trying to fix the process, fighting against censure, against closed primaries, and even against grassroots organizing. In this way, they not only damage Trump’s reputation, they damage the structural integrity of the Texas Republican Party.

Let us not forget, these are the same lawmakers who tried to honor Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood, on the House floor. They failed only after a revolt from the conservative flank. These are the same lawmakers who voted to preserve DEI mandates in Texas and honored Jimmy Carter, while mocking the legislative priorities of the party they claim to represent. They voted to send billions to Hollywood movie producers and refused to deliver property tax relief to Texas homeowners, despite a record $24 billion surplus. They supported more than a dozen Democrat legislative initiatives. To call them Republicans in name only is not rhetorical excess. It is descriptive precision.

President Trump is famously loyal. That loyalty is a strength, but when abused, it can become a vulnerability. The Uniparty thrives by weaponizing that loyalty, by surrounding Trump with advisors who sound friendly, look loyal, and recommend actions that slowly, almost imperceptibly, corrode the very movement he leads. Endorsing anti-MAGA state representatives in Texas is not just a political misstep. It is a strategic blunder with ripple effects across the country. It tells grassroots conservatives that the president does not understand their plight. Worse, it tells the establishment that they can hijack his influence and use it against his own agenda.

We must be clear-eyed. Trump cannot possibly know every legislative detail in every state. That is why his advisors matter. But when those advisors are the very people MAGA was created to displace, the risk is not just misalignment, it is sabotage. The solution is simple: the president should pause all Texas House endorsements immediately and demand a full audit of the names presented to him. Every endorsement should be vetted against two questions: did this lawmaker support the GOP’s Speaker nominee, and did they vote to impeach Ken Paxton? If the answer to either is no, the endorsement must be revoked.

The future of the Texas House, and indeed the conservative movement, hangs in the balance. If President Trump is to drain the swamp in Washington, he must first recognize that a miniature version of it festers in Austin, smiling through endorsements it does not deserve. The president has the courage to correct course. But first, someone must show him the map.

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