Ted Cruz’s Emergency Rally Had Very Little Talk of Ted Cruz

Donald Trump wins again.

Eric Gay/AP

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In making the case for a man he once disparaged as “worse than Hillary,” President Donald Trump on Monday painted a vote for Sen. Ted Cruz as a vote for his administration. He touted the Texas senator’s voting record as being crucial to some of his key successes, including the Republican tax bill and the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

“Nobody has helped me more, with your tax cuts, with your regulation, with all of the things that we’re doing,” Trump said referring to Cruz.

The president notably played down their once contentious relationship during the 2016 Republican presidential primaryā€”which included Trump insulting Cruz’s wife and suggesting Cruz’s father was part of a conspiracy to assassinate JFKā€”telling supporters that he now considered the senator someone who has become a “really good friend.” (Don Jr. already explained that all he needed to make nice with Cruz was a few drinks in the Trump Hotel Lobby.)

Trump’s appearance in Houston, which came on the first day of early voting in the state, was meant to boost Cruz in his surprisingly tough re-election bid against his Democratic challenger, Rep. Beto O’Rourke. The rally on Monday featured some of the president’s most frequent talking points as of late, including the baseless claim that Democrats are funding so-called “caravans” of migrants to enter the country.

“Do you know how the caravan started, does everybody know what this means?” Trump said while making a hand motion that depicted cash being dispensed. “I think the Democrats had something to do with it, and now they’re saying ‘I think we’ve made a big mistake’ because people are seeing how bad it is, how pathetic it is, how bad our laws are.” 

Many of his claims about the composition and intention of the migrants traveling to the US have been repeatedly disproved.

Trump on Monday also continued to falsely claim that Republicans hoped to ensure health care coverage for those with preexisting conditionsā€”a blatant falsehood that ignores the president’s various attempts to end rules protecting coverage for people with preexisting conditions. The remarks also come as dozens of Republicans are attempting to rewrite their own records of voting to kill the Affordable Care Act ahead of the midterm elections.

The president’s remarks, which lasted roughly 90 minutes, largely avoided direct talk of Cruz. He did, however, take a cue from the Texas senator by repeatedly mispronouncing O’Rourke’s name.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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