Donald Trump cut himself off while trying to say Ken Paxton’s name at a Texas rally on Tuesday. The president stopped partway through and paused. He then started over in front of the crowd in Corpus Christi.
Donald Trump faces awkward moment during rally
Donald Trump was setting Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton when the slip happened. He began the first name, broke off at “Ken Paaaa—,” raised his eyebrows, and held a short pause. Looking up and to his right, he picked the thought back up with “And Ken—I’ll tell you what.” His next attempt, “Ken Paxton is…”, faded out too. Trump then shifted into a rambling defense of Paxton’s record as a lawyer, saying “Everything he did was for Texas.”
Clips of the moment spread on X, where commentators weighed in on it. The pause was not the only halting moment on Trump’s recent campaign stops. In Sioux City, Iowa, on Thursday, he abruptly said “JADE” in the middle of a sentence about Senate control, then moved on to a different point. The day before, in Pendleton, South Carolina, he made a sudden sound while recalling his choice of Nikki Haley, then South Carolina’s governor, as U.N. ambassador in his first term. He said “EUHH,” then restarted the line at “I took the governor.”
Moreover, Paxton shared the stage with Trump at a midterm rally in Lubbock on Tuesday night. Trump spent time there praising the physique of Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, who faces a tight race against Democrat Sherrod Brown. He then turned to Paxton and said, “Maybe I should do that with Ken Paxton, but I’m not sure your body is gonna qualify.”
Trump has mixed praise and teasing when discussing Paxton before. At an earlier October rally in Denton, he credited Paxton with standing by him during a difficult stretch and called him a longtime friend. On September 2, and again at the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas, he joked about Paxton’s looks and clothing. In Dallas, he followed the jokes by calling Paxton “the greatest attorney general in America.”
