It turns out, there’s no good way to campaign as a Republican incumbent if President Donald Trump doesn’t like you.

Republican Sen. John Cornyn has run his primary campaign in Texas almost entirely with the goal of winning Trump’s endorsement. Rep. Thomas Massie ran his GOP primary in Kentucky defiantly thumbing his nose at the president’s imprimatur in politics. Sen. Bill Cassidy ran somewhere in the middle ground, trying to appease the MAGA voters who dominate Louisiana’s primary base but never apologizing for voting to convict Trump in an impeachment trial five years ago.

Trump’s political standing is as low as it’s ever been, based on public polling and American anger over ever-rising costs. His party got crushed in off-year elections last fall and faces a big fight to hold onto the House and Senate majorities this fall.

But when it comes to Republican primaries, it doesn’t matter what you do, if Trump decides he doesn’t support you.

Cassidy and Massie lost their bids by wide margins in the past week, and Cornyn heads into Tuesday’s primary runoff as an underdog now that Trump has endorsed his opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“I answer to 750,000 people in southeast Louisiana. The day I stop representing them is the day they send me home, and that applies to everybody, including U.S. senators,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Wednesday.

“Obviously President Trump is very involved, but the Trump agenda is the agenda of most Republicans in this country,” he added.

With Massie and Cassidy, their respective breaks with Trump were clear.

Massie led the effort last summer to pass a bill that forced the Justice Department to release the trove of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, something that had been a conservative cause celebre but contained embarrassing revelations about Trump’s connections to Epstein.

Massie also fought against several marquee pieces of legislation, including last summer’s massive domestic policy bill that focused on border security and tax cuts, on the grounds that they violated conservative principles to reduce the deficit.

Cassidy, meanwhile, has been a reliably conservative vote for more than 11 years in the Senate, but back in February 2021 he was one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in the impeachment trial following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Cornyn, though, has no real policy break with Trump — on legislation or in either of the impeachment trials. In his campaign he had gone out of his way to shower Trump with praise and fall in line on policy provisions the president wants. It seemed that Trump simply liked Cornyn’s opponent more.

This spring, Cornyn reversed his long-held support for the legislative filibuster to back a Trump-supported nationalized voter registration system bill.

This month, he introduced legislation to rename a long Texas highway in the president’s honor.

Senate Republicans had privately chuckled and shaken their heads over Cornyn’s efforts to ingratiate himself to Trump. But they had nonetheless supported the effort out of respect for the four-term senator’s career – and feared that if Paxton wins the primary, his controversial record could put the seat at risk in November.

Then, after months of promising an endorsement and not making one, Trump backed Paxton on social media. Republican senators were enraged but also confused.

“I think John Cornyn has been a great member of the United States Senate,” Sen. Mike Rounds said Tuesday. “He’s valued by our conference, and we’re just very sorry to see that happen. But you’ll have to ask the president why he did it, because we don’t know.”

Cornyn and Cassidy both hail from the Reagan-Bush era of Republican politics, when free trade, support for the military and family values were supposed to be placed center stage in any GOP primary. The brash Trump style and renegade approach has never quite vibed with the old Republican establishment’s manners.

It’s Massie that actually has the most in common with Trump.

He was always closest to members of the House Freedom Caucus, which was founded last decade as a rebellious group of far-right lawmakers.

Trump fits their style, but not always their policy goals. He often happily supported big-spending projects that blew up deficits and never embraced the type of religious language favored by conservatives such as his first vice president, Mike Pence.

Most of those Freedom Caucus conservatives made accommodations for Trump – they supported his proposals even if they didn’t like the policy, and in turn he would support their campaigns.

But Massie was never able to make that tradeoff. He drew Trump’s ire back in 2020, getting labeled a “grandstander” for delaying a pandemic relief bill. A year ago, during his opposition to the massive partisan domestic policy bill, Massie told reporters Trump’s support wouldn’t matter, rattling off his primary vote percentages as proof.

“I got 81 percent when he was against me. And 75 percent when he was for me. Like, it’s not gonna be that consequential,” he said last year.

It did end up being very consequential, as Trump deputized his top political advisers to recruit challengers and then raise tens of millions of dollars to spend against Massie.

Scalise said in the end it was about Massie’s unwillingness to support the Trump agenda that he had campaigned on in 2024.

“We didn’t want any tax increases, no tax on tips, overtime, we wanted more energy security, we put all that into a bill, and he voted no,” Scalise said. “Well, his constituents wanted those things, obviously. And eventually you vote against the wishes of your own constituents, then your constituents will find somebody better.”

Scalise said that Cassidy’s efforts to ingratiate himself with primary voters was never going to work and he probably should not have run for reelection.

“In the case of Sen. Cassidy, you could see it for years, I mean, the voters just felt very burned by that vote,” he said of the 2021 impeachment vote.

“It’s part of your job as a congressman to explain the tough votes and make sure that your voters know what you’re doing when you’re up here,” he added. “And if you blindside your voters and break that trust, that’s something you can’t get back. And that’s what happened with Cassidy.”

The question now for incumbent Republicans, especially those with political approaches more in line with Cassidy and Cornyn, is how to avoid the ire of Trump.

At this rate, the president could decide to support a challenge to Senate Majority Leader John Thune in South Dakota and even his close friends won’t guarantee victory.

“I’ll tell you this, John Thune’s a great friend, he’s an amazing, capable person, I think he can do just about anything. But I’m not going to get into predictions,” said Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota.

He quickly added that he didn’t think such a challenge would happen. “John Thune and President Trump, they work together. That doesn’t mean they agree on everything, but they work together,” Hoeven said.

Scalise put it more bluntly: that Republicans have to follow their voters and right now, their voters support Trump.

“The voters get the last say,” he said.