President Trump quipped that Texas Senate GOP candidate Ken Paxton was “a pain in the ass” and acknowledged he was “a little controversial” during several stops in the Lone Star State and Oklahoma — unusually candid remarks about one of his own endorsees just weeks out from the November elections.
Page A2From§Eachthe midnight edition — 2 October 2026
Trump calls Paxton 'best AG in Texas history,' three weeks later 'a pain in the ass'
As it ran on the front
Thursday the president toured a truck plant in Denton, then drove 86 miles to Durant, Oklahoma, the opening rally of a 32-day blitz built to stump for allies in states the party had already filed as won. Dennis Rodman rode along, introduced as a North Korea expert. The common thread running under all of it was Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general turned Senate candidate, whose race against James Talarico three separate fall polls now call a toss-up.
That's the frame. Here's the beat that lands today. On September 10, at the state party's convention, the president told the crowd: "You may not like his looks, but he's the best AG in Texas history."…
…(cont) The record doesn't say why the message changed; it only says what ran, and when. Best-AG-in-Texas-history came first. Pain-in-the-ass came second, twenty-two days later, with a Senate seat and a 32-day blitz sitting in between.
The spin on this one is thin because the tape does the work. You don't call a guy "the best AG in Texas history" at your own convention and then, three weeks later, warn a rally crowd he's "a little controversial," unless something moved between those two microphones. The polls say what moved: three separate surveys turned a race the party priced as a layup into a toss-up, the same stretch of ballot where Kansas and Iowa turned into headaches and Florida needed its own vice-presidential rescue trip. When the same operation that filed a race as won sends the president back to walk it half back on tape, that's not a messaging strategy with a name. That's the sound of a party checking its own math a month before the votes get counted in Texas.
“Twenty-two days got you from "best AG in Texas history" to "a pain in the ass," same party, same mouth. When the top of the ticket starts hedging his own guy in public, on tape, three weeks before the vote, that's not loyalty, that's a man covering a number he already saw. The seat's a toss-up because somebody at the top just told you, out loud, that it is.”
“Look, the president's always been blunt, that's the brand, he's just keeping it real with Texas voters about a candidate everybody already knows is a little rough around the edges — wait, did I just call our own nominee rough around the edges? That's not — strike that. He's standing by Paxton, full stop, the convention line stands, this is just — this is just Trump being Trump.”
Earlier in this story
- Party that called these red-state races "fat guy layups" dispatches president, vice president and Dennis Rodman By Sal · the early evening edition, 1 October 2026
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
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.