Algemeen·NRC·23 sep

What Donald Trump understands about character in public life

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. The president so relishes this act that, on the second night of his midterm convention in Dallas this month, he quoted his own delivery from the previous night, after confiding that his aides had implored him not to.