Ken Paxton, one of the party’s top Senate candidates and a Trump loyalist, said that “everybody’s numbers dropped” after the event, according to audio obtained by The Times.
Page A2From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 30 September 2026
Trump calls Paxton the best AG in Texas history at the convention Paxton privately says tanked his numbers.
As it ran on the front
I have to admit I came in about my E-ZPass account. There's a charge on there from a toll plaza in Waco I've never been within two hundred miles of, and I've been transferred four times this week trying to find whoever's desk that particular ten dollars and forty cents sits on. Nobody at the toll authority will own it. Everybody agrees somebody else has it. I only mention it because it turns out not to be entirely unrelated to what I actually came to talk about.
While I was on hold — and it's a long hold, they play you a saxophone version of something I can't place — I had the paper open on my knee, and there was Ken Paxton. Attorney General, Senate nominee, the man the President stood up for at the party's convention in front of a primetime crowd. I wrote this down because I wanted it exact: "You may not like his looks, but he's the best AG in Texas history." That was September 10th. I have it right here — hold on, it's under the toll bill — yes. September 10th.…
…(cont) A week before that, September 3rd, the same President had already given what the wire service called a scathing review of Mr. Paxton's appearance, in the same breath as a promise to campaign hard for him. The insult and the promise, written down on the same page, seven days ahead of the stage.
Then on September 30th — today, near enough — audio surfaced of Paxton telling donors, privately, that after that convention, "everybody's numbers dropped."
I'm sorry, I keep going back to this. Let me take it from the date first. September 10th is the convention. September 30th is Paxton, in a room with donors, talking about what the 10th did. Three weeks apart, two different rooms, one man in both of them.
Forgive me, I know I already brought this up, but let me come at it from the word this time instead of the date. He didn't say his numbers. He said everybody's.
I don't mean to circle back a third time, but I keep thinking about how a thing like that gets out of a room. Somebody sat at that donor meeting with a device in a pocket or a bag, and had to carry it out past the coats and the car keys the same as anybody. I know what that's like in a small way — I've carried the good folding chairs out of my own garage for every function this family gets invited to and half the ones we don't, and you feel every step, because you know what happens if you drop it. My wife says I hold on to that chair story longer than it deserves. She's probably right. I only tell it the once.
I promise this is the last time, and it never is. September 10th, the best AG in Texas history, delivered from a stage the President built for him. September 30th, the same man, privately, to donors: everybody's numbers dropped.
Which of those two pages — the one with the crowd, or the one with the donors — got written down first?
Oh — wait, before you go — whose convention does Paxton say dropped everybody's numbers?
“This guy stands on a stage he built himself, calls the man "the best AG in Texas history" one week after mocking his face on the same tour, and then that same nominee turns around and tells his own donors the whole convention dragged the numbers down. That's not campaigning, that's a photo op with a body count only the donors get to hear about. Ask who's supposed to find out first, the voters footing the bill in November or the men writing checks at a private dinner.”
“The President's remarks were obviously good-natured ribbing between allies, the kind of tough-love branding that fires up a base, and one line from a private donor call about "numbers" doesn't mean the endorsement wasn't a net positive — did I just call insulting a nominee's face in prime time "tough-love branding"? That's not — let me just start that over.”
The receipts
· Trump makes convention pitch for Paxton: You may not like his looks, but he’s the best AG in Texas history from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· The GOP’s Texas-sized Ken Paxton dilemma from the morgue, 5 Sep 2026
· Trump trashes Paxton’s appearance after vowing to campaign for him in Texas from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.