Example (Putin Would Eat President Trump for Lunch):
The other Russian businessman who Trump somewhat resembles is Boris Berezovsky, a member of the first cohort of Russian oligarchs. A mathematician turned car dealer turned political operator, Berezovsky was a publicity-hungry megalomaniac inclined to overstate his fortune. "I never make millions or tens of millions," he once said. "I only make billions."
What do you think the term political operator means?
Best Answer
An operator in the ordinary sense is someone who knows how to operate a machine—which buttons to push and wheels to turn and levers to pull in order to make it do what you want.
A political operator is someone who understands how the political system works, which people make the important decisions, and how to induce them to follow his agenda rather than somebody else's. He knows how to operate the political "machine" to make it do what he wants.