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!”
Standing backstage at a boisterous rally in Columbia, Missouri, five days before the election, with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” pulsing throughout a packed airport hangar, Trump threw his head back and marinated in the moment. Soon enough he would be dazzling a pack of six thousand with his usual riff: Democrats letting the illegals in, Republicans fighting the drugs and criminals, plus the new wrinkle of nixing birthright citizenship. But before any of that, he took a long, introspective pause. Preparing to take the stage, the president seemed to