President Donald Trump came to San Antonio on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, to stump for a Senate candidate — and wound up giving a laughing arena a candid update on his hair, telling supporters that the view of himself from behind had left him “depressed.”
Trump, 80, was headlining a rally at the Freeman Coliseum for Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, in his race against Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico. Partway through, the president asked the crowd to turn around and watch a video playing on a screen near the ceiling about border crossings he blamed on the Biden administration. The crowd booed the footage. Then a rear view of Trump’s head appeared on the same screen.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m not happy right now,” he told supporters. Touching the back of his head several times, he added, “Getting a little bit thin up there, I’m not happy.”
He kept going: “This is not good news. Now I’m depressed. I said, ‘I look really sharp tonight,’ then I just looked at myself from the back, this is not good.” Gesturing to the people in front of him, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?” The bit drew laughter and applause.
A Kind Word From the Stage
About five minutes later, Trump invited “Angel Mom” Marie Vega onstage. Vega, who has appeared in support of the president before, including at a White House event for Angel Families in February, spoke about her son, Border Patrol agent Javier “Harvey” Vega Jr., a former U.S. Marine who was killed in an ambush in La Feria, Texas, in 2014 while on a family fishing trip. Two people in the country illegally carried out the attack during an attempted robbery.
Before backing Trump’s call for tighter border enforcement, Vega addressed the elephant on the jumbotron. She told the president not to worry about his thinning hair, assuring him he was still handsome. The crowd cheered as Trump smiled, pointed her way and thanked her.
Not His First Big-Screen Surprise
Trump’s hair has become a recurring theme of his midterm campaign swing. At the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas, he reacted to seeing the back of his head on the jumbo screens, telling that audience he needed to do a little better in the back and that he should not have looked up. On Sept. 9, as he spoke with reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland before flying to the convention, the wind had its own say.
Trump used the hair-loss drug Finasteride, sold as Propecia, during his first term, though it has not appeared on his medical reports since he returned to office. Trump biographer Michael Wolff has claimed on the “Inside Trump’s Head” podcast that the president’s routine includes a portable kit of small hair tufts, matched to his color and applied with paste.
Crowd Size and the Senate Fight
The San Antonio stop was Trump’s third trip to Texas in less than a month. He was in Nebraska on Monday, Oct. 5, and Maryland on Tuesday, Oct. 6.
DeAnna Garza, director of booking at the Freeman Coliseum, said the venue was set up with 6,844 seats for the general public and that the event officially sold out, and that Trump’s team installed a 40-by-20 video wall in the parking lot with a livestream for people who could not get inside. “Who the hell fills up an arena like this for a midterm?” Trump said, as a C-SPAN camera panned across empty seats at the top of the arena. He also urged Texans to pretend he was on the ballot and touted his proposed $5,000 “Trump dividend.”
The night opened with a physical altercation between an audience member and a protester who had booed the president, and at least 10 other people were ejected or walked out after heckling him. Demonstrators gathered outside with signs reading “no more detention centers” and “San Antonio fights back.” Trump claimed many of the protesters were paid by enemies of the nation. He also kept up his mockery of Talarico, falsely calling him a vegan and saying First Lady Melania Trump had corrected his pronunciation of the word.
Republicans are pouring millions into Paxton, who polls show is facing a closer-than-expected race in a state Trump carried by more than 13 points in 2024 and that has not elected a Democrat statewide since 1994. Southern Methodist University political analyst Matt Wilson told Fox 4 Dallas that a Trump visit cuts both ways, but that the president can still fire up the MAGA base — something Republicans need to match the enthusiasm Democratic voters are showing. Election Day is Nov. 3.