President Trump is not someone who's closely associated with Learning From Your Mistakes. Yet during Monday morning's Executive Time, the artful dealmaker made an announcement that contained the slightest hint he might be thinking strategically based on past experiences. The leader of the free world examined the field gunning for the Republican Senate nomination in West Virginia and proclaimed he'd joined Team #NeverBlankenship.

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To the great people of West Virginia we have, together, a really great chance to keep making a big difference. Problem is, Don Blankenship, currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State...No way! Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2018

The move comes as something of a surprise, because Blankenship, a former coal baron who wrapped up a year in federal prison last May, has billed himself as "Trumpier than Trump." The candidate leaned into this brand in response to today's development:

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Blankenship’s response just now: ‘As some have said I am Trumpier than Trump, and this morning proves it.’ https://t.co/MmknYSQ7U1 — Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) May 7, 2018

Blankenship's statement is undercut a bit by the lack of random capitalization and spelling errors. But it is indicative of how hard-right some Republican candidates now think it's possible to go—and in a statewide race, no less.

Don the Trumpier does have a point in some areas. Whereas the president is merely suspected in a growing portfolio of shady activity, Blankenship has already gone to the federal slammer. Like Trump with all those contractors he neglected to pay for the work they did for him, Blankenship made his bones stomping all over the little guy in pursuit of personal profit. A frightening 2010 exposé from Rolling Stone laid bare his general MO:

You might not know that he grew up in the coal fields of West Virginia, received an accounting degree from a local college, and, through a combination of luck, hard work and coldblooded ruthlessness, transformed himself into the embodiment of everything that's wrong with the business and politics of energy in America today—a man who pursues naked self-interest and calls it patriotism, who buys judges like cheap hookers, treats workers like dogs, blasts mountains to get at a few inches of coal and uses his money and influence to ensure that America remains enslaved to the 19th-century idea that burning coal equals progress. And for this, he earns $18 million a year—making him the highest-paid CEO in the coal industry—and flies off to vacations on the French Riviera.

Blankenship's "ruthlessness" culminated in the Upper Big Branch mining disaster of 2010, an incident at one of his mines that killed 29 workers. Blankenship escaped with a conviction on just one count—conspiracy to violate mine safety and health standards—and served a year in jail, despite U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin's contention that “Don Blankenship ran a massive criminal conspiracy” and that the mine's standards led to more than two dozen deaths. Blankenship's attorney at the time, Bill Taylor, said the government provided “no witnesses, no proof” to back its charges. The jury disagreed.

A vigil in Whitesville, West Virginia for the victims of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. Getty Images

That Rolling Stone profile also contained an episode that serves as perhaps the purest possible distillation of Blankenship's character:

During the 1980s, [Blankenship's Massey Energy] injected more than 1.4 billion gallons of slurry underground—seven times the amount of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico during the BP disaster this spring. According to the lawsuit, Massey knew that the ground around the injection sites was cracked, which would allow the toxic waste to leach into nearby drinking water. But injecting the slurry underground saved Massey millions of dollars a year. "The BP oil spill was an accident," says Thompson. "This was an intentional environmental catastrophe." Massey denies any wrongdoing in the case.

But after Blankenship started pumping the slurry underground, he took steps to make sure that he and his family did not suffer. Around the time that his neighbors were starting to get sick, Massey paid to build a waterline to bring clean, treated water directly to Blankenship's house from Matewan, a few miles away. Yet he never offered to provide the water to his neighbors, some of whom can see his house from their windows.

Blankenship is now running on the idea he will go to Washington and fight for The Little Guy against The Elites, even though he's an Elite who's spent his professional life trampling The Little Guy in pursuit of his own ends. If that sounds familiar, so might the kind of rhetoric Blankenship has broken out on the campaign trail. Just check out this exercise in batshit insanity that was presented as a campaign advertisement:



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What in the world did I just watch pic.twitter.com/4eudpGAxp0 — Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) May 3, 2018

"China people?" Jesus, the racial demagoguery in this country used to have some standards. At least George Wallace—and yes, Donald Trump—had some flair. Considering Trump once suggested Ted Cruz's father helped assassinate JFK, the president might glob onto Blankenship's nonsense "Cocaine Mitch" conspiracy theorizing. But he might at least have some better branding. The Tangerine Generalissimo says the quiet parts out loud, but Blankenship says ... whatever this is in a trademark monotone that just screams Empathetic Human Being Who Cares Whether You Live or Die.

It might be that last part that convinced Trump not to back this freak show. All he ever seems to care about is how someone presents on TV. After all, he initially rejected John Bolton as a Secretary of State pick because of his mustache, and his main problem with Sean Spicer's inauguration meltdown was the suit he wore to oversee the carnage. Certainly, Trump has no palpable concern that Blankenship just recently got out of jail. That's now totally kosher for Republican candidates for the national legislature.

Getty Images

And obviously, it's not any kind of hurdle that the candidate fans racial resentment in public. Trump had the audacity to cite "Alabama" in his tweet, presumably pointing to Roy Moore as an example of the pitfalls of backing a lunatic going Full Trump who may struggle in the general election. This is amazingly shameless considering Trump backed Moore, fully and unequivocally, despite Moore being accused of sexual misconduct by at least a half-dozen women, many of whom said they were underage at the time. Trump suggested they were liars and held a rally in Florida—15 minutes from the Alabama border—in the run-up to the election in which he urged Alabamians to vote for Moore. Now Trump will surely try to claim he never supported that Loser, a man who also once mused that America was "great" when "we had slavery."

Blankenship will be a purer test of whether candidates who are not Trump can run on pure, uncut Trumpism. Moore's baggage was extraordinarily grotesque. Blankenship's largely fits in with modern conservative principles, which adamantly oppose environmental and worker-safety regulations that might hinder corporate profits. Plus, we know public racism is no problem. Blankenship also has Trumpian name-recognition in his home state, which his primary opponents do not, and his hardline stance has him "surging" in the polls—Trump endorsement be damned.

Behold, another test of whether we've truly gone 'round the bend. Considering he has about as much charisma as a floorboard, a Blankenship victory might be proof that all you need to win a Republican primary these days is a healthy dose of demagoguery and a name people recognize.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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