John Cornyn publicly condemned Bo French on Sunday after the Republican candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner posted xenophobic comments about students of South Asian descent at a University of Texas football game. Cornyn called on other Republican officials to denounce the post as well, turning a social media outburst into a party fight just weeks before the November election.
The backlash began the morning after the Texas Longhorns upset Ohio State, when French shared a photo of students in burnt orange gear and said the scene showed how many Americans had been displaced by foreigners. In another post, he wrote, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” then followed it with, “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” The remarks were aimed at students of color and, as several commenters noted, at people French had labeled foreigners without any information about their status.
Cornyn, who is the Republican nominee for statewide office, said French’s comments showed intolerance and racism and warned that party leaders risked normalizing both if they ignored them. He wrote that this is how great political parties self-destruct, and called the posts sad. Jon Rosenthal thanked Cornyn for speaking out, while Dustin Burrows said a person can oppose immigration policy without demeaning people because of race or ethnicity and said French had crossed the line. Dade Phelan went further and called French unfit for office.
The criticism matters because French is not a fringe figure speaking only to a small online audience. He has previously called for the deportation of 100 million people, a figure that would include U.S. citizens, and the latest post landed after he had already become known for hardline anti-immigration rhetoric. The new flare-up also exposed a sharper split inside the Republican Party, with some officials condemning the post in plain language while others were being pressed to do the same.
What remains unresolved is whether French will delete the post after being urged to do so, or whether the backlash will deepen into more formal party pressure. For now, the answer from Cornyn and other Republicans is already on the record: they are not willing to let the language pass as ordinary campaign rough talk.
