The worst Trump-that is, the bullying, vindictive, undisciplined side-was his mocking of reporter Serge Kovaleski. For the definitive explication of this incident, I refer you to the great James Taranto, who more or less concludes that no matter how you look at this, it reflects badly on Trump.

But Taranto then acknowledges that Trump’s supporters are likely to come to a different conclusion. “Which brings us to the Trump paradox,” he writes. “How can his supporters and his detractors see the same behavior in such drastically different lights?”

And the answer Taranto hits upon strikes me as deeply revealing. Is Trump punching down at some crippled reporter? Or punching up at the New York Times? Your perspective likely determines your conclusion on the incident. And, as Taranto points out, it’s not like the media can’t be just as mean-spirited. He points to a recent piece in the Atlantic where the reporter describes, for no real reason, a Trump supporter as having “a leathery complexion and yellow teeth.” Taranto writes that this fellow is just “an ordinary citizen taking part in politics. Unlike Serge Kovaleski, he does not have the benefit of spokesmen to express institutional outrage when somebody publicly ridicules his appearance.”

More importantly, though, to Trump fans, incidents like his mocking of Kovaleski are probably seen as a small price to pay for a guy willing to say the unsayable. The Democratic nominee will be someone who insists on all manner of liberal pieties, not least among them being that radical Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. Every one of Trump’s “gaffes” is actually a promise to his supporters that he’s going to call things as he sees them.