In early March, Donald Trump said he would “soon” issue an endorsement in the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Texas, adding that he expected the other candidate to drop out of the race after failing to receive his support. Two days later, The Washington Post reported the president had made up his mind: He would endorse Sen. John Cornyn over his intraparty rival, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, ahead of their May 26 runoff election.

The ostensible decision made sense, since GOP officials were in broad agreement that Cornyn was a safer bet in the general election. For a president terrified of accountability, it wasn’t too surprising that he was prepared to back the incumbent, if for no other reason than to improve the party’s odds of keeping the seat and preventing a Democratic-led Senate.

And then, nothing happened. The political world kept waiting for an endorsement that Trump suggested was imminent, only to learn that he wasn’t ready to make an announcement.

As this week got underway — and with time running out in the primary race — Cornyn said he expected the president to remain neutral. “I think that ship has finally sailed,” the senator said. One day later, the president proved him wrong. MS NOW reported:

President Donald Trump endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Republican Senate primary runoff on Tuesday, ending months of public neutrality in a race that could help determine the balance of power in Congress.

“I know Ken well, have seen him tested at the highest and most difficult levels, and he is a WINNER!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, touting Paxton’s support for ending the filibuster and passing the SAVE America Act. “Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate.”

At 657 words, the president’s online statement was unusually long and focused largely on conspiratorial grievances.

As for Trump’s earlier demand that the candidate who failed to secure his endorsement immediately drop out, Cornyn made clear in an online statement of his own that he plans to stick around for the final week of the race. (He didn’t mention his recent legislative effort to rename a highway after Trump, as part of a clumsy bid to impress the president.)

With polls showing a competitive primary contest, the new developments are likely to give Paxton at least some additional momentum. As far as Democrats are concerned, that’s great news.

Indeed, Trump didn’t just deliver the news the state attorney general hoped to hear; he also stuck to the script that Democrats have been daydreaming about for months.

In a written statement issued after the president’s announcement, a spokesperson for the Senate Majority PAC, the main super PAC aligned with the Senate Democratic leadership, said, “Donald Trump just endorsed a man who was impeached by his own party, indicted for felony fraud, reported to the FBI by his own staff, ordered to pay $6.6 million to the whistleblowers he tried to destroy, and whose wife is divorcing him on biblical grounds. And Trump did so despite the entire Republican political operation spending more than $100 million for the other guy.”

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Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

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• Trump’s endorsement of Texas’ Paxton delights Democrats, frustrates Republicans