Trump campaigns for Paxton by calling him a 'pain in the ass' and 'a little controversial'

…(cont) Here's where I go back to the page. Aug. 28, Sen. John Cornyn — not an opponent, the man whose seat this is — told the Texas Tribune Paxton is "lazy," a "poor campaigner," doesn't raise money. I wrote that down because it was the home-state senator, not a Democrat, saying it on the record, about the man running to replace him.

Sept. 14, a filing. The Senate Leadership Fund's Texas PAC put $53.8 million into Paxton's campaign — call it $54 million, the receipts do. Is that the figure meant to answer Cornyn's complaint about money? Eight days later, Sept. 22, Cornyn and George W. Bush held a Dallas fundraiser for six Republican Senate candidates. Six. Eight days after $54 million landed, the two men closest to that money in Texas raised more of it for everyone running except him.

Sept. 27, a poll. Talarico 49, Paxton 44. Five points, a month before Election Day, from Texas Public Opinion Research.

So I took it out to the car. Fan belt's been squealing since July, cheap part, I finally bought the new one at the auto store on the corner — eleven dollars, I kept the receipt out of habit. Put it in Saturday. Car still won't turn over in the cold. New belt, same problem. Was the belt ever what was wrong with it?

Is fifty-four million dollars a new belt? It's a specific, countable, real amount of money. Does any of it answer the five points? Does any of it answer "lazy"? Does any of it answer "a pain in the ass"? The filing doesn't say which one the money was for.

I drove it to the toll plaza anyway, because the car does run, just not in the cold, and I sat in the line behind the cars ahead of me feeding in their change, and I thought about six names on a fundraiser list and the one that's missing, and about a man who flew in his candidate's crowd for him — Dennis Rodman, North Korea knowledge and all, Thursday night, Denton — to stand next to a man he also, that same day, called a pain in the ass.

Excuse me — before I let this go. I keep coming back to that dash, I'm sorry, I already brought it up once. It isn't that the Post couldn't print the word; The Hill already had, in full, from the candidate's own boss. Which fact was the fifty-four million dollars supposed to fix — the word the Post wouldn't finish, or the one Talarico's five points already did: pain in the ass?