Trump at his Kansas rally: “it’s much easier when I attack somebody who’s unsupportive”

Trump spent much of his Kansas rally attacking the Rev. Adam Hamilton’s record. Then he said the quiet part out loud.

Hamilton, a United Methodist pastor, is the Democrat running against Sen. Roger Marshall. Trump said he is “not a good guy.” Then the tell: Hamilton “has been totally unsupportive of me. You know, it’s much easier when I attack somebody who’s unsupportive. He’s been unsupportive of me. So I don’t feel badly about doing it at all.”

So the conscience clause is loyalty. A couple of minutes later he said he’d looked up the pastor’s record, and reached for this insult: “His record is like a trans person. He’s like terrible.” And the real grievance? “He said bad stuff about me.” Hamilton hadn’t supported him, he added.

Hamilton’s church was at the forefront of pushing the United Methodist Church to welcome LGBTQ members, per the Kansas City Star’s live fact check of the rally, which also rated Trump’s other big Hamilton claim that night “Needs context.” Polls show an unusually tight race, per the Wichita Eagle, and Trump flew in two days before the vote to say all this out loud.