Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky says Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is a “disaster” and will “hurt the country” — but that he’s still a better choice for the White House than former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I think Donald Trump’s a disaster. I think he’ll hurt the country and we’ll lose in a landslide, but I will still pledge to support the nominee because I think Hillary Clinton is the worst person on the planet to run the country, and I think the emails have cemented the notion that she [just] has bad judgment,” Mr. Paul, a 2016 GOP rival of Mr. Trump, said on Thursday’s “Hannity” program on Fox News.

Mr. Trump, for his part, has made fun of Mr. Paul’s golf game and said last month on Twitter that Mr. Paul “reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain.”

“The thing is is that there are relative degrees of enthusiasm when you support the nominee,” Mr. Paul said. “And I won’t be enthusiastic, but I will support the nominee and I will pledge to support the nominee, but I think in the meantime [in] the next six months I’m going to try to convince people that Donald Trump is a fake conservative. He’s not really conservative at all, he’s been for [a] single-payer health care system, he’s been for higher taxes, and really what bugs me the most is his business model has been using eminent domain to take private property from small property owners, gobble that up in order for him to make money, and I think that is something antithetical to the notion of freedom.”

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