Rulers have long kept one tool that no voter, jury or committee can take from them: the gift. When an institution says no, the man at the top can still say yes, and pin a medal on the man who was turned away. That is a reflection, not a fact. What happened in San Antonio on Wednesday night, 7 October, is the fact.

Freeman Coliseum, late in the evening

Donald Trump had been talking for more than 100 minutes. By the time he got to the surprise, the crowd had lost some of its enthusiasm, according to the Associated Press account carried by CBC. Then he called Roger Clemens, raised in Houston and seated among the audience, up to the stage and announced that the pitcher would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“We’re giving him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And, along with the Congressional Medal of Honor, it’s the highest award bestowed upon anyone.”

The president called him “maybe the greatest pitcher of all time” and said the medal “is a big step up from the Hall of Fame.” Clemens, 64, answered first with “Well, I’m stunned,” and then with gratitude: “This supersedes anything that obviously I’ve done in my playing career. And to get it from this man, this president, there wouldn’t be another president I’d want to get it from.” He added, of Trump: “You’re talking about a winner. That’s a winner right there.”

What the writers refused

Over 24 seasons Clemens pitched for the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees and Houston Astros. His seven Cy Young awards are a record. His 4,672 strikeouts rank third all-time, behind Randy Johnson and Nolan Ryan, another Texan. The baseball writers who vote on Cooperstown kept him out anyway, year after year, because of suspicions that he used steroids, until his eligibility on their ballot ran out in 2022. He has firmly denied using them. In 2012 a federal jury acquitted him of charges that he lied to Congress in 2008, when he swore he had never taken performance-enhancing drugs.

For the president, that acquittal closed the matter. Without being asked, he brought up the allegations himself. “And by the way, people talk drugs,” he said, as The Boston Globe reported. “He never admitted to anything. They have no information, they didn’t find anything.” And later: “It’s not like, ‘oh gee, he’s loaded up.’ He never admitted to anything. He’s just a physical monster, OK?”

He made the case in arithmetic too. “He won seven Cy Youngs, that means seven years,” Trump said. “If you win one you’re a superstar. If you win one, you go to the Hall of Fame for the most part. You win two, you’re guaranteed. He won seven and they didn’t take him.” Trump has attacked Hall of Fame voters over the snub before. He has made this kind of case once already: last year he gave the late Pete Rose a posthumous pardon, after which Major League Baseball lifted its ban on the all-time hits leader. Rose is still not in Cooperstown either.

He has handed out the medal freely to the famous he admires: Tiger Woods, Roger Staubach, Mariano Rivera and Lou Holtz, Elvis Presley after his death, and Rush Limbaugh the year before the radio host died.

Only once did the honouree push back. Trump claimed Clemens also held the record for hitting batters. “I don’t think I lead Major League Baseball in hit batters, Mr. President,” Clemens said. Records show he hit 159, 15th on the all-time list. Then he joked: “And the way he talked about all my stats, he could be my agent.”

A safe state that stopped being safe

The medal was the end of the evening. The reason for it was Ken Paxton. Trump endorsed Paxton, the state attorney general, over the incumbent senator, John Cornyn, in the Republican primary. Now Paxton is in a close Senate race with the Democratic state representative James Talarico, who holds a slight edge in recent polling, NBC News reported. Texas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. Trump carried it in 2024 by almost 14 percentage points.

Yet this was his third visit to Texas in less than a month, the Globe’s political report noted, and Republicans have already put more than $300 million into the state’s elections. The president’s weak approval ratings, the war with Iran and soaring gas prices are hurting the party almost everywhere, which fits the red-state tour of the last few weeks.

Gov. Greg Abbott, who won a third term in 2022 by roughly 11 points and now faces a competitive race against Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, was not there. He was scheduled to dedicate a hospital about 330 miles away. “For years, Greg Abbott has never been shy about embracing Donald Trump,” said Jacob Long of the Texas Democratic Party, “but now, as Texas families get crushed by record-high prices driven by Trump’s tariffs and war with Iran, suddenly Greg Abbott has somewhere else to be.”

Trump called Paxton “perhaps the greatest attorney general in the United States of America.” He did not mention the recently leaked recording in which Paxton complained about the Iran war and rising fuel prices, and grumbled that operatives in Washington were running his campaign. Called to the stage near the end, Paxton told the president behind him: “I am so grateful that you’re here.”

Interruptions, and an execution

At least a dozen protesters interrupted the speech, one apparently close to the stage, and police led some away. Trump stepped back from the microphone for a moment, then said of one: “He’s going back home to mom. But what he doesn’t know is his mom voted for Trump.” He also walked back his recent talk of Iran striking American cities, a theme he raised in Nebraska: “You want to see problems? Let them hit San Diego, let them hit Los Angeles. We’re not going to let that happen.”

Then came the death penalty, in the state that leads the nation in executions. Trump repeated his support for it for “large scale drug dealers, human traffickers and anyone who kills a police officer,” and he turned to Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. Trump had approved Hasan’s execution by firing squad days earlier. It would be the Army’s first such execution since World War II, and it is scheduled for December 3 at Fort Hood. The president suggested Talarico opposes it. Talarico’s campaign did not immediately respond when asked.

So in one evening the president promised a medal to a man the baseball writers had refused, and promoted the death sentence of a man that military courts had condemned. Clemens’s view of baseball’s inside pitch might stand for the whole night: “When you let it go inside, it’s the hitter’s job to get out of the way, right?”