Donald Trump Jr. is here to save Ted Cruz – Mother Jones

Two years ago, Ted Cruz lifted the head of the president. On Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. came to Wichita Falls, Texas, to tell Republican voters that everything was forgiven.

A little more than a month before election day and Senate control may be at stake, national Republicans are now overworked to save Cruz from a historic crisis at the hands of Democratic representative Beto O ' Rourke. The Club for Growth spends a lot of money. The National Committee of Republican Senators is considering an intervention. And the assets themselves are getting ready. President Donald Trump should follow in his son's footsteps later this month in "the largest stadium in Texas we can find."

Don Jr. cutting for Cruz is, at first sight, extremely strange. At the 2016 primary, Trump had promised to "topple the beans"On Cruz's wife, Heidi, and promoted a tweet that contrasted an unflattering photo of Heidi with a glamorous photo of Melania Trump. Trump also suggested that Cruz's father, who is Cuban-American, had contributed to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Cruz cited these attacks after refusing to support Trump during his speech at the 2016 convention. Then he still campaigned for Trump.

Don Jr. was not there only to denigrate O'Rourke (although he did); he was also there to shoot down the elephant in the room.

And he did it from the start. As Don Jr. explained to the partisan crowd, he met Cruz a few months after the convention at a conservative dinner:

I was sitting at the Texas table and there were many of my friends and many friends of Ted …. So the first few seconds were a little awkward, but we started having a good conversation, as it should, and at the end of this meal, all the guys were like 'Hey Don, let's go back to the Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Ave. and we are going to spend some time in the lobby, some are going to have a drink or two. "

Not wanting to miss occasional bursts of laughter, Don Jr. then paused in history to make a joke about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. "I know this particular week, you are not allowed to take a beer if you are conservative," he said. "Now, if you're a Liberal, you can make cocaine and you can be the president, but it's okay, it's good, we'll set a different standard and it'll be fine." (Ahem.)

After this dinner, according to Don. Jr., he and Cruz composed:

I told Ted, "Hey, you're more than welcome [if] you want to come back with us. And Ted Cruz came back with us and this group of Texas boys sat in the lobby of the Trump Hotel two months after a controversial primary for three hours. And we had a ball, formed a good relationship. And let me tell you this: it was not easy. I mean that like the biggest compliment. I do not know if the shoes were reversed that I could have done. I would like to believe that I could. But it is a testimony of the character of this man. From that moment on, do not listen, you have to talk about it. It's the elephant in the room with which the media will take care from the first moment. That's the reality. From that moment, this man fought for you.

Echoing the fears expressed by Republicans elsewhere, Don Jr. warned the public against the common belief, right, that the media lie about polls suggesting a great year for Democrats. (The president himself hinted that there would be a "red wave".) "We have a dynamic here in Texas," Cruz cautionedwhen it was his turn. "We will see a record turnout among Democrats here in November."

Don Jr. has a lot of things – a flannel shirt owner; a graduate of Wharton, even inexplicably; anyone who thinks the amendments to the Bill of Rights were ordered by importanceBut he is above all an emissary. His visit reminds us that the speech of the faction convention that Cruz seemed to announce was smoothed out of necessity. Trump needs the Republican Party, and for now, Republicans really need Trump too.