A single sentence in an otherwise glamorizing and embellishing article does not a anti-Beto piece make.

That sentence doesn't even read as not pro-Beto to me, either. It's more of a neutral "this guy is really cool, but is he cool enough?" rhetorical.

"wrote a murder fantasy in which the narrator drives over children on the street" doesn't sound particularly pro-Beto to me?

"Wrote a fantasy-novel equivalent of GTA", how about that?

It seems beto-safe to me. Of all the details in this story, this child death fiction no doubt required a strategic approach. It's the weirdest of the bunch and the sort of thing that an opponent would love.

In this case, it seems the best way to play it was to just cut to the chase. Summarize it as brutally as Trump could and just be the first to say it. Get it out there so that an opponent can't ride it's energy.

It depends on how it's it's spun. They could be trying to sell his cool "bad boy" image. Some polling research must have shown them this is appealing to enough voters and others are not paying too much attention. He already has the DUI thing and apparently wrote a fantasy novel about running over children with his car. So maybe they don't have much to lose and might as well go for the cool troublemaker / hacker thing.

It's unclear why the author of the article is unsure what type of president the US is ready for, right after they elected Donald Trump.