Trump campaigns for 'Beautiful Ted' in Houston

HOUSTON — President Donald Trump came to the Toyota Center on Monday before a delirious MAGA-capped rally and proclaimed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas “a real good friend of mine” who will be re-elected in two weeks.

Cruz, who preceded the president to the podium, returned the love.

“I will make a prediction,” Cruz said. “Donald Trump will be overwhelmingly re-elected president.”

By contrast, Cruz said, his rival “Beto O’Rourke is the only Democratic Senate candidate in the entire country to say he would vote to impeach Donald Trump.”

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Trump and Cruz were archrivals at the bitter end of the 2016 Republican primary contest, but both men said they have buried the hatchet and are now staunch allies in Washington, with Trump giving Cruz credit for passing his agenda of tax cuts and reduced regulation, and standing down Democratic opposition to the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Before leaving the White House aboard Marine One for the flight to Houston, the president told reporters that, “To me, he's not 'Lyin' Ted' anymore. He's 'Beautiful Ted.'"

The Toyota Center was awash in President Trump’s signature red caps, and Gov. Greg Abbott roused their bearers to ear-splitting shouts of affirmation when he opened the rally proclaiming, “We need to keep Texas as red as the MAGA caps you are wearing tonight,” Abbott said. “The last thing we need is Congress to be run by Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi.”

“As goes Texas, so goes the United States,” Abbott said.

“All the gold that is pouring in from California cannot buy Beto a Senate seat here in the United States,” Abbott said. “The fact is that Beto O’Rourke is hostile to Texas values.”

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Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick offered the same message with an Alamo theme.

“Why are we here?” Patrick said. “To tell Beto O’Rourke and the Democrats that we are not turning Texas into California.”

He told his audience that they carried the DNA of Alamo heroes Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis, and that the Democrats “can never take that away from us. We will never give up Texas. We have drawn the line in the sand, and Beto O’Rourke and the Democrats will not cross it.”

While not applying a nickname to O’Rourke, Patrick said Beto was an acronym for “Border Enforcement Totally Optional.”

Patrick said there were 16,000 inside the Toyota Center, another 10,000 to 15,000 outside, and that 100,000 people had sought to get a ticket to the event.

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Matthew Krohnert of Austin brought his 11-year-old daughter Ramani, the oldest of his three children, who he and his wife home school. It was their first Trump rally — and, for Ramani, who said she was enthusiastically pro-Trump but short on policy reasons, it was the first time chanting “Build the Wall,” a periodic bonding experience for those like the Krohnerts, who waited in line for about five hours before being admitted to the Toyota Center about four hours ahead of the start of the rally.

Krohnert, who speaks in the soft accent of his native New Zealand, said he liked Trump because he believed he was less likely to take America to war.

He said he preferred Cruz to O’Rourke, a three-term congressman from El Paso, because Cruz seemed better able to marshal his argument in their debates, while O’Rourke seemed unfocused and less articulate.

Praise for Texas Republicans

Trump spoke for an hour and 20 minutes, concluding at just after 8:15 p.m.

While Trump did not bestow a nickname on O’Rourke, he did say that, “Ted’s opponent in this race is a stone-cold phony named Robert Francis O’Rourke” who favors open borders and a socialist takeover of health care.

He praised Cruz and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, as steadfast allies in the Senate.

He praised many of the Republican members of Congress up for re-election, including U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, and Bill Flores, R-Bryan, both of whom represent parts of Austin. Trump singled out East Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, the member with the free-wheeling rhetoric closest to Trump’s in the delegation, saying that he is going to win by so much he doesn’t need your vote, but give it to him anyway.

Trump also praised Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton, but failed to mention Land Commissioner George P. Bush, and Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, both of whom have lavished praised on Trump and also are running for re-election.

Trump especially sang the virtues of Abbott for his handing of Hurricane Harvey, presenting the audience with what sounded like a trick question, positing that maybe they liked their governor “more than Trump.” The response was muddled.

Immigration claims

Trump’s toughest language was about immigration and replete with dubious assertions.

He presented Democrats as the party of open borders, putting Americans at risk of life and limb in order to flood the country with illegal immigrants where they could find refuges in sanctuary cities, commit crime, drain welfare benefits, burden hospitals, and vote illegally, which he said was a commonplace in California — a favorite unproven assertion — despite what the “fake news media” tells you.

“So many people voting illegally in this country, it’s a disgrace,” said Trump, adding that Democrats are willing to wreck the country in order to regain power.

Trump said he needs to expand Republican congressional majorities to end chain migration, the visa lottery and the practice on the border of catching and releasing illegal border crossers.

“We have a tiny, tiny minority. I need more votes in the Senate,” Trump said. “We need 60 votes. We have 51 votes there. We have a tiny minority.”

“In this election, you can send a message to the radical Democrats. Don’t mess with Texas,” Trump said.

Trump and others at the rally used a peculiar metric for placing it in the pantheon of big crowds in Texas history, with campaign adviser Katrina Pierson suggesting that the crowd was larger than Beto O’Rourke's largest crowd this year and Hillary Clinton’s largest crowd in 2016 put together because 100,000 people expressed interest in attending the event and might have attended if they had been able to get tickets, but that would have required a bigger venue.

Organizers originally booked an 8,000-seat arena, then days before the event moved it to the Toyota Center. There are at least four larger venues in Houston, however.

More than 50,000 attended an O’Rourke rally and concert with Willie Nelson in Austin at the end of September.