What Trump Understands About Character in Public Life

The Economist: “The political style of Donald Trump is so sloppy and coarse that he rarely gets the credit he deserves for cunning and even subtlety. Take his handling of Ken Paxton, the attorney-general of Texas, whose cartoonish defects as a candidate have made his race for Senate there one of this year’s most competitive contests. Mr Trump has developed a comic routine at Mr Paxton’s expense, or seeming expense…”

Said Trump: “I said, ‘I don’t like the way Ken dresses. And then I said, ‘I don’t really like the way Ken talks.’ And then I said something they really hated. I said, ‘I don’t really like the way he looks.'”

“But it was all right, he said, because Mr Paxton was the best attorney-general in the history of Texas, and as a senator he would vote ‘the way we would vote.'”

“To conclude, as many commentators have, that Mr Trump was just trashing Mr Paxton is still to underestimate the first president to get re-elected after being convicted of felonies. Sure, he was demeaning a lackey. But he was also hammering home a message, trying to rescue Mr Paxton by creating what politicos like to call a permission structure: You may not think much of him as a person. I get it. It’s OK. What matters is that he will deliver for you.”