Young, telegenic, and social media savvy, O’Rourke presented himself as the antidote to the sorry state of American politics. He was fun and authentic, skateboarding on the campaign trail and refusing to hire pollsters or consultants. He also rejected corporate money and super PAC donations, wanting only the aid of small donors. In running this romantic campaign (with a perfect foil in Cruz, viewed as a sort of political Hannibal Lecter by the left), O’Rourke became the darling of the Resistance. It didn’t matter that his platform wasn’t fully fleshed out, or that those policies he did embrace (Medicare for All, an assault weapons ban, calling for Trump’s impeachment) were tailored more toward national liberals than Texas voters. O’Rourke was a cause more than he was a candidate. And the perks were breathtaking. Drawing mammoth crowds and dotting the state with his signature black-and-white “BETO” signs, O’Rourke raised preposterous sums of money, $38 million in the third quarter alone, a presidential-level haul and the most ever in a U.S. Senate race.3 (The previous record was $22 million.)
The Cruz campaign was concerned but not flustered. They had expected a comfortable victory in the 10- to 12-point range; as summer turned to fall, and Betomania blew up, they scaled back their projections to the high single digits. Cruz expected his opponent to turn out masses of new Democratic voters; the incumbent would win by mobilizing his own party’s base. None of this was terribly worrisome—until the White House started calling.
Trump was delighted upon hearing that summer of Cruz’s peril in Texas. Though they both claimed to have moved past their rivalry, with the senator becoming a reliable advocate of the president’s agenda, their relationship was no less awkward. Whenever they were together, Trump would recall Cruz’s victories in the primary—as well as their attacks on one another. The president had never been defeated by anyone else in politics; because of this, Cruz occupied a space in Trump’s psyche that was apparent to their mutual allies. When word came that Cruz was in trouble, then, the president was delighted to play the role of rescuer, joking with aides that he would swoop down to Texas and save Lyin’ Ted.
Cruz tried to politely dismiss the president’s offers of help, but the phone calls kept coming, at least a half dozen in the month of August alone, with Trump insisting on coming to Texas for what he promised would be the biggest campaign rally of 2018. Cruz was annoyed. He knew what Trump was up to. And the senator didn’t want or need his help. Yet he was trapped: If he said yes, then the president’s visit could do even more damage with the suburbanites his campaign was bleeding away; if he said no, then Trump might just be liable to do something crazy, such as send a tweet attacking Cruz and hurting his turnout efforts with the GOP base.
The ensuing back-and-forth was a negotiation between competitors masquerading as allies. Cruz, wanting to push the event far away from the major media markets and out into Trump country, recommended they hold the event in Lubbock; the president was adamant that they visit a major city, predicting a capacity crowd. With the discussions at an impasse, Trump took matters into his own hands. “I will be doing a major rally for Senator Ted Cruz in October,” he tweeted on August 31. “I’m picking the biggest stadium in Texas we can find.”
Cruz was irritated if unsurprised. It took three hours for him to muster a tweet: “Terrific!”
Trump relented on the size of the stadium—Texas has venues holding more than one hundred thousand people, his staff warned, and it would be impossible to hide the empty seats—but he wouldn’t budge on the location. This would be the highest-profile event of the election cycle, a demonstration of his mercy and his beneficence. Trump wanted maximum exposure. They settled on the Toyota Center in Houston, filling almost every last seat and drawing vast crowds of protesters outside.
On October 22, two and a half years removed from Trump’s accusing Cruz’s father of aiding the assassination of JFK and Cruz calling Trump “a pathological liar,” the former foes shared the stage in Houston. The president couldn’t help but remind everyone of their “nasty” feud in 2016. But that was all behind them now. (“He’s not Lyin’ Ted anymore,” Trump said earlier in the day. “He’s Beautiful Ted.”) The president credited the Texas senator with leading the charge to pass the GOP agenda, devoting much of the rest of his speech to apocalyptic immigration talk. Democrats, he said, wanted to “give aliens free welfare and the right to vote,” and also let in MS-13 gang members, who “like cutting people up, slicing them” instead of using guns. Trump also embraced the term “nationalist,” calling himself by that controversial label for the first time.
The Cruz team breathed a sigh of liberation when the event concluded, believing disaster had been avoided. They were right. But the damage was undeniable nonetheless: Cruz’s support dropped 5 points overnight in the Houston market, and the local Republican congressman, John Culberson, saw an even steeper decline.
Then, at the end of October, Trump told Axios in an interview published one week before Election Day that he planned to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants and noncitizens born on American soil.4 “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end,” Trump said, suggesting he could use an executive order to overturn the promises of the Fourteenth Amendment, enacted at the Civil War’s end to protect the rights of newly freed slaves.
Republicans were floored by the president’s latest voluntary distraction. “Well, you obviously cannot do that,” Ryan responded during an interview with WVLK radio in Kentucky. “You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.”
Of course, the Speaker knew better than just about anyone that facts presented no obstacle to Trump. The president made more false claims (1,176) during the two months leading up to Election Day 2018 than he had in all of the previous calendar year (1,011), according to Daniel Dale, a Toronto Star reporter who had meticulously chronicled Trump’s relationship with the truth. Dale also concluded, “The three most dishonest days of Trump’s presidency were the three days prior to the midterms,” with a single-day record of 74 false claims being made on Monday, November 5, a little more than three per hour.5
Questions of truthfulness and legality and constitutionality notwithstanding, Trump’s latest proclamation spelled further political trouble for Republicans with Hispanic constituencies. “It’s like he wants us to lose!” Cruz bellowed upon hearing of the Axios interview. Launching into his impersonation of Trump, the senator said, “What could I do to really antagonize Hispanics? I know! I’ll threaten to take away their kids’ citizenship!”
If the president was aware of the anger he was incurring within the Republican political class, he didn’t show it. Trump was having the time of his life. Earlier in the summer, while he was traveling to South Carolina for a rally, storms delayed his arrival by over an hour. The pilots of Air Force One suggested they return to Washington, knowing how far behind schedule they were and seeing no immediate improvement in the weather. Trump wouldn’t hear of it. Vowing never to disappoint his thousands of fans waiting on the ground, he grew impatient as Air Force One continued its holding pattern. “Land this fucking plane already!” he bellowed toward the cabin. “Trust me, it’s safe! I’ve been flying longer than you guys have!”