Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Diversity in American politics, part 1b


This page is a continuation of a page published on December 27, 2017 that described some factions within the Republican Party of the United States.

The most effective Republican lobbying groups

These are the first four paragraphs of a September 24, 2018 story in FiveThirtyEight which, according to the introductory paragraph, "was produced in collaboration with ABC News and Ballotpedia.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.
On the afternoon of July 18, President Trump tweeted his “full and total endorsement” of Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a candidate in the state’s closely matched Republican gubernatorial primary runoff.  Kemp’s opponent, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, had strong conservative chops — he enjoyed the endorsement of the National Rifle Association and the support of popular outgoing Republican Gov. Nathan Deal.  But after the president’s tweet, the race began to look very different.  Within days, Kemp surged in the polls and won in a landslide.

The Republican Party is a coalition of overlapping factions — pro-business types, libertarians, evangelicals, populists, single-issue advocates and more — but to whom does it really belong? To many, the answer is clear: Donald J. Trump. And the success of Trump-endorsed candidates in the Republican primaries this year seems to bear that out — but, according to our research, that’s only part of the story.

Between Feb. 27 and Sept. 13,2 774 people appeared on the ballot this year in “open” Republican primaries — those with no Republican incumbent3 — for Senate, House and governor. Like we did with Democrats earlier this year, FiveThirtyEight, Ballotpedia and ABC News teamed up to look at every single one of those candidates and see which GOP-affiliated people and organizations supported which candidates. Using campaigns’ financial filings, endorsement information from various interest groups and, of course, Trump tweets, we attempted to quantify which wing of today’s Republican Party best reflects the preferences and mood of rank-and-file voters.4 Here are some of the biggest takeaways.

Almost all candidates Trump endorsed won their primaries

How candidates endorsed by selected people and groups fared in open Republican primaries for Senate, House and governor in 2018
This is most of the first sentence in the second paragraph, without the link.

"The Republican Party is a coalition of overlapping factions — pro-business types, libertarians, evangelicals, populists, single-issue advocates and more ...."

A chart followed the last quoted paragraph.  It wasn't an image, so it wasn't copyable, but I transcribed it here.  Their article arranged the chart in the order of the most consistent winners.  I copied their arrangement.  Note that the Chamber of Commerce and the Tea Party Express had the same winning percentage, even though the Tea Party endorsed twice as many candidates.


 Total Winners Share That Won
Donald Trump 17 15 88%
Koch Network 21 18 86%
Main Street Partnership 17 11 65%
Chamber of Commerce 8 5 63%
Tea Party Express 16 10 63%
Club for Growth 21 13 62%
National GOP Congressional Cmte. 41 28 62%
National Rifle Association 14 8 57%
Susan B. Anthony List 23 12 52%
House Freedom Fund 14 7 50%
Right to Life 74 33 45%

I found a typo in their table.

I transcribed the numbers in their article accurately, but there's a typo in the numbers for the National Republican Congressional Committee.  If they endorsed 41 House Candidates, and if 28 of them won their races, then they had a 68% success rate, not 62% as the article states.

Their tweet about the article included the same numbers, including the same typo.



The Chamber of Commerce vs. Donald Trump

This group is one of the more successful lobbying organizations.  They only endorsed eight candidates, but five of the eight won their races.  That gives them a 63% winning percentage according to the chart above.  Their record is equal to the Tea Party Express, slightly higher than the winning record of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and significantly higher than the winning record of the National Rifle Association.

These are the first six paragraphs of a May 31, 2018 CNN-Money story.
President Trump's strict stance on trade could put 2.6 million American jobs at risk, the head of the Chamber of Commerce says.

Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the business organization, issued the forecast in a memo to the board of directors Thursday that was obtained by CNNMoney.

The memo, citing outside studies, adds the possible job losses from tariffs both threatened and enacted by the administration, plus a possible US withdrawal from NAFTA, the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.

A NAFTA withdrawal would kill as many as 1.8 million American jobs in the first year, the memo warned.

In addition, tariffs against China could cost 134,000 US jobs, steel and aluminum tariffs could cost 470,000 jobs, and tariffs on autos and auto parts could cost 157,000 jobs, Donohue warned.

He sent the memo on the same day the administration said it would impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum from three of America's biggest trading partners — Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

These are the first five paragraphs of a July 2, 2018 Reuters story.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday denounced President Donald Trump’s handling of global trade disputes, issuing a report that argued tariffs imposed by Washington and retaliation by its partners would boomerang badly on the American economy.

The Chamber, the nation’s largest business lobbying group and a traditional ally of Trump’s Republican Party, said the White House is risking a global trade war with its push to protect U.S. industry and workers with tariffs.

The group’s analysis of the harm each U.S. state could suffer from retaliation by U.S. trading partners painted a gloomy picture that could bring pressure on the White House from Republicans ahead of congressional elections in November.

For example, nearly $4 billion worth of exports from Texas could be targeted by retaliatory tariffs, the Chamber said, including $321 million in meat the state sends to Mexico each year and $494 million in grain sorghum it exports to China.

Trump has slapped tariffs on billions of dollars worth of steel and aluminum imports from China, the European Union,  Canada and others, prompting retaliation against U.S. products. He is considering extending the levies to the auto sector.

Similar stories were published on the same day by
The New York Post Axios Inc Magazine CNBC
Town Hall Breitbart Zero Hedge

A similar story was published the next day (July 3, 2018) by National Public Radio

 The 6-minute YouTube video on the left was uploaded on the same day by the Fox Business Channel.

It's a report by Neil Cavuto about the new campaign by the Chamber of Commerce.


The last paragraph of the previous story says that America's trading partners retaliated against U.S. tariffs.  The truth is that our trading partners had been imposing high tariffs on U.S.-made goods for decades without any retaliation by America.  President Trump was simply treating them the same way that they had been treating us.

The Chamber was correct in their analysis.  Many of our largest trading partners negotiated trade deals that were more fair.  These are the first two paragraphs of an October 6, 2018 Wall Street Journal story.
WASHINGTON—While the White House is progressing on trade deals with allies including Canada, Mexico, Korea and Europe, its dispute with China looks increasingly intractable, with tariffs between the world’s two largest economies likely cemented in place for years.

In other trade fights, President Trump used tariffs as leverage to reach deals. Threatening car tariffs helped convince Canada and Mexico to concede to U.S. demands for a new North American Free Trade Agreement, the president boasted.  “Without tariffs, we wouldn’t be talking about a deal,” he said Oct. 1 in the Rose Garden.
However, China's trade war with other countries is fought with other economic weapons besides tariffs.  These are the next four paragraphs of the same October 6, 2018 Wall Street Journal story.
China is different. Tariffs aren’t simply a negotiating tactic for the U.S., but a way to change economic incentives.

The Trump trade team believes U.S. firms need protection from a predatory Chinese state, which Mr. Trump says coerces U.S. companies to fork over technologies and subsidizes Chinese firms to expand globally.

Using tariffs to make it more expensive for companies to export from China, Trump trade warriors figure, will encourage foreign firms to take their know-how out of the country.

This isn’t a short-term strategy.

China is targeting areas of the United States for tariffs because these areas voted for Donald Trump.  These are the first paragraphs of a June 15, 2018 editorial by the editorial board of the New York Times, titled Chinese Tariffs Are Already Hitting Trump Voters.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in their editorial.
In Iowa, where farmers raise 40 million to 50 million pigs annually, President Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum from Mexico have already cost producers $560 million, according to an Iowa State University economist. How can that be, you ask. Mexico has threatened countervailing tariffs that include a 20 percent tariff on American pork. That prospect alone sent hog prices tumbling. If you like barbecued ribs, this could be a great summer for you. If you raise the pigs, you may be eating more barbecued beans.

Soybean growers throughout the Midwest are nervously watching as China, which buys a quarter of American soybeans, takes aim at their crop in response to the Trump administration’s announcement that it will move ahead with $50 billion in tariffs on “industrially significant technologies” in more than 1,000 categories. Trade between the two countries has been “very unfair, for a very long time,” the American president said in a statement. Mr. Trump vowed that he would add to that list if China retaliated — which is what most countries do in this situation. Indeed, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has said to expect as much. Oh great, Middle America collectively sighs.

Local newspapers across the heartland are full of similar tales of value destruction and lost income as a result of Trump trade war tweetism. In Great Lakes states, traditional steel makers might benefit from the administration’s 25 percent tariff on foreign steel. But for steel users, it’s an entirely different story. Shortly after tariffs were announced, steel suppliers, no longer as fearful of price competition, began jacking up prices — they’re no fools. That has meant a 40 percent increase since January in the cost of steel for their customers who use it in their finished products, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They can either pass that increase on to you or be less profitable.
The last sentence in the quoted paragraphs makes it sound like there are only two options for the companies that import from other countries with the goal of using this material in their own finished products.  "They can either pass that increase on to you or be less profitable."


The two changes that happen because of tariffs

The tariffs of every nation have a direct effect and an indirect effect.  The direct effect of every tariff is something that the importing nation wants.  The exporting nation pays an extra amount to the importing nation for the privilege of having its' goods sent to the consumers.  This gives the exporter an opportunity to increase its' world-wide revenue.  However, as noted by the June  15, 2018 New York Times editorial, those tariffs do force the importer to either pass along the cost of the tariff to their own consumers or be less profitable.

However, the indirect effect of any tariff is that some consumers will refuse to buy the products because of their higher prices.  These consumers will complain to their government, asking them to lower the tariffs.  If their government is unresponsive to the wishes of the people, perhaps because its' national constitution was recently changed to allow its' leader to remain in office for the rest of his life, then the people may start a revolution.

These are the first two paragraphs of a February 27, 2018 NBC News story.  The link in the second paragraph was in their press release.
BEIJING — It may have looked no different from the past few years’ gatherings — with its rows of suited men and perfectly draped red curtains — but this year’s National People’s Congress delivered one of the most significant shifts in Chinese politics this century.

After casting his own ballot, a visibly relaxed Xi Jinping looked on as the annual meeting of China's rubber-stamp parliament voted to abolish a two-term limit on the presidency, effectively paving the way for the 64-year old leader to enjoy unchecked rule for life.

All of the countries that export to America, including China, have a need to import goods that they cannot produce within their own borders.  Until recently, America hasn't imposed large tariffs on them, but now we are imposing large tariffs.

These are the first three paragraphs of a September 2018 press release of the United States Trade Representative.  The link in the third paragraph was in their press release.
Washington, DC – As part of the United States’ continuing response to China’s theft of American intellectual property and forced transfer of American technology, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) today released a list of approximately $200 billion worth of Chinese imports that will be subject to additional tariffs.  In accordance with the direction of President Trump, the additional tariffs will be effective starting September 24, 2018, and initially will be in the amount of 10 percent.  Starting January 1, 2019, the level of the additional tariffs will increase to 25 percent.

The list contains 5,745 full or partial lines of the original 6,031 tariff lines that were on a proposed list of Chinese imports announced on July 10, 2018.  Changes to the proposed list were made after USTR and the interagency Section 301 Committee sought and received comments over a six-week period and testimony during a six-day public hearing in August.  USTR engaged in a thorough process to rigorously examine the comments and testimony and, as a result, determined to fully or partially remove 297 tariff lines from the original proposed list.  Included among the products removed from the proposed list are certain consumer electronics products such as smart watches and Bluetooth devices; certain chemical inputs for manufactured goods, textiles and agriculture; certain health and safety products such as bicycle helmets, and child safety furniture such as car seats and playpens.

In March 2018, USTR released the findings of its exhaustive Section 301 investigation that found China’s acts, policies and practices related to technology transfer, intellectual property and innovation are unreasonable and discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce.

The trade war has few alliances

Now that America is, under President Trump, imposing high tariffs, some of our trading partners have lowered their own tariffs because they fear that their own consumers will rebel at the high price of the goods that are imported into their countries.

These are the first three paragraphs of a September 20, 2018 Reuters story.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China plans to reduce the average tariff rate on imports from most of its trading partners as soon as October, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

In July, China cut import tariffs on almost 1,500 consumer products ranging from cosmetics to home appliances as part of efforts to open up its economy, the world’s second biggest.

The move was in line with Beijing’s pledge to its trading partners - including the United States - that it would take measures to further increase imports.
Link to a similar story, published the same day by the Wall Street Journal.

Link to a similar story, published a week later by Bloomberg after more details about the reduced tariffs were announced by China.

These lowered tariffs by the governments of both countries bring happiness to the consumers of both countries because the tariffs of any country hurt its' own consumers.

The tariffs of any country hurt its' own consumers.

China only wants one revolution.  It cannot afford to have two of them.  The first image is Chinese propaganda that was produced during Mao's Cultural Revolution, which killed more people than World War 2.  The second and third images are photos taken during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.



Dissent among Republicans in Congress

Link to a Wikipedia page called Factions in the U.S. Republican Party.  The first page in my series of blog pages about political factions mentions Republican factions that include the Trump family, the Koch brothers, and two different groups of gays.


Link to an October 31, 2016 story in the Miami Herald.  The Miami chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans decided to endorse presidential candidate Donald Trump.



Link to the webpage for the Miami chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans, which includes a link to their Facebook page.

There is dissent even among gay Republicans.  These are the first three paragraphs of an October 22, 2016 Politico story.
The board of the nation’s largest group of LGBT Republicans has voted to not endorse Donald Trump, in a contentious decision that did not reflect the preference of many of its chapters.

While the Log Cabin Republicans are united against Hillary Clinton, the group’s 14-member national board narrowly voted on Tuesday to “withhold” an endorsement of the Republican nominee, according to Gregory T. Angelo, the organization’s president.

It’s the second time the official national group has chosen not to back the GOP nominee — the prior time was 2004 for George W. Bush.  The move reflects struggles throughout the Republican coalition, though for LGBT conservatives it’s been particularly wrenching.  Trump’s rhetoric, they say, has been more pro-gay than any presidential nominee in history.
"Trump’s rhetoric, they say, has been more pro-gay than any presidential nominee in history."

As stated in my essay, there will always be some overlap among political factions because many voters have multiple interests.  For example, many Democrats want unions to have a voice in the management of the company they work for, yet many of these same Democrats still believe in the basic principles of capitalism, even when their representative in the House or the Senate is an outspoken Socialist.


The March 2018 Spending Bill

... is an example of a difference of opinion among the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Individual Congressmen and -women are, of course, allowed to have an individual opinion, and even when 25 of them disagree with their own leadership, it doesn't make them a true faction, but disagreements like this can be a sign of a future faction.

These are the first four paragraphs of a March 22, 2016 story in The Hill.
Twenty-five House conservatives bucked Republican leadership on Thursday by opposing a procedural motion that was needed to bring a $1.3 trillion government funding package to the floor.

Votes on what are known as rules in the House typically fall along party lines, with leaders viewing defections as a serious offense.

But outraged by the speedy vote on the more than 2,000-page funding bill — the text of which wasn’t released until Thursday night — members of the House Freedom Caucus defied their leadership.

Their stand almost took down the rule, which passed 211-207 after Republicans gaveled it to a close despite several Democrats not having voted.
Rules in the U.S. House of Representatives (and in the U.S..Senate) are decided by a committee within each legislative body.  Once a rule is passed, it cannot be disobeyed during the legislative process.  Legislators who are very familiar with these rules can use them to delay or to speed up a particular piece of legislation.  This is one reason why the Obamacare legislation was passed in 2009 without any Republican votes, and without most of the entire 435 members of Congress ever reading it.

Yes, the rules matter.  This June 25, 2015 Washington Post story summarizes the history of the passage in 2009 of a law with the formal title of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.


The Club for Growth vs. an incumbent Republican

This is a link to their home page.

These are the first five paragraphs of an October 1, 2016 Politico story. The links in the fourth paragraph were in their story.
Last year, back when polls favorable to Donald Trump were still being dismissed and skittish GOP candidates shied from confronting the blustery mogul, one group took him on directly.  The Club for Growth, the deep-pocketed interest group that is feared by Republicans who come into its cross hairs for supporting tax or spending hikes, began running ads decrying Trump’s lack of conservative bona fides.

“There’s nothing conservative about supporting socialized single-payer health care,” intoned a typical TV spot.  “There’s nothing conservative about giving money to the Clintons. There’s nothing conservative about Donald Trump.”

But in seeking to destroy Trump’s mystique, the Club only damaged its own—badly.

Trump gave no indication he was intimidated by a group that over the previous decade had earned a reputation for burying Republicans it considered ideologically impure.  “They did this ad,” Trump said in rambling monologue in October 2015 at a casino on the Las Vegas strip.  “The good news was it had no impact.  The pictures were so beautiful.  I want to find ... Where did they get them?  I was like 20 years younger.  I looked so handsome.  I never knew I was that good looking in a suit.  I looked so good.”

From the moment Trump announced his candidacy in the summer of 2015 until he clinched the Republican nomination a year later, the Club for Growth waged a nonstop, $7 million campaign against him.  Only one outside political organization spent more to advertise against Trump in the primaries—a Super PAC formed explicitly to defeat him.  Yet, as Trump foresaw, the Club for Growth had little impact.

These are the first three paragraphs of a May 23, 2019 Politico story.
A prominent conservative group is trying to lure a staunch ally of President Donald Trump into a primary race against Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, threatening to inflame intra-party tensions in a state crucial to the party’s 2020 strategy.

The Club for Growth is attempting to nudge Rep. Mark Walker, a third-term evangelical pastor, into the 2020 Senate race.  This week, it completed a poll suggesting that Tillis would be vulnerable to a challenge from the right — particularly against Walker.

It’s a striking break for a group that had ceased backing primary challenges to establishment-aligned lawmakers, a posture that put it squarely against party leadership.  Five years after its last attempt to topple a sitting senator, the organization is once again signaling its interest in taking on incumbents.
This January 23, 2020 Politico story is about a campaign by the Club for Growth to help a primary challenger to an incumbent Republican in the U.S. House named Kay Granger.

These are the first two paragraphs of a January 3, 20 Politico story. The links in the fourth paragraph were in their story.
The conservative Club for Growth plans to air a massive ad campaign attacking Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), adding fuel to the intraparty battle that kicked off after the GOP congressman launched a Senate campaign this week.

Collins announced Wednesday he is challenging Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who was sworn in this month to replace Sen. Johnny Isakson after he resigned due to health issues.  Collins is a top ally to President Donald Trump, but his decision to run for Senate sparked significant blowback among some Republicans who expressed concern it could jeopardize their hold on the seat and cause problems elsewhere on the Senate map.
Link to the official U.S. House website for Doug Collins.


The two largest GOP influencers have disagreements

The stories in this section are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.

These are the first four paragraphs of a July 31, 2018 New York Times story. The links in the fourth paragraph were in their story.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has given Republicans good reason to tolerate his unruly leadership style. His tax cuts, deregulation push and nomination of conservative judges amount to the most orthodox Republican agenda any president has pursued since Ronald Reagan.

Few had better reason to appreciate Mr. Trump’s results than Charles G. Koch, a billionaire industrialist who is one of the Republican Party’s biggest donors.

Yet Mr. Koch’s simmering frustrations with the president over trade and immigration have now spilled over into an ugly public feud with Mr. Trump and candidates who side with him. By calling Mr. Trump’s trade policies “detrimental” and denouncing divisive leadership, Mr. Koch is making a provocative political move that — be it hardball strategy or more of a ploy — threatens to complicate Republican efforts to hold on to their slim congressional majorities in the November midterm elections.

Mr. Trump hit back on Tuesday by attacking Mr. Koch; his ailing brother and business partner, David; and the powerful political network they founded as “totally overrated” and “a total joke in real Republican circles.

These are the first two paragraphs of an August 2, 2018 article in The Economist.
CHARLES KOCH (pronounced “coke”) and his brother David have built one of America’s most powerful political machines. The donor network they founded is one of the most influential groups in conservative politics, rivalling the Republican National Committee. Earlier this year it said it planned to spend $400m in the mid-terms to help preserve the Republican majority in both Congressional chambers. But that did not stop President Donald Trump giving the billionaire brothers an astonishingly insulting ticking off this week.

“Charles Koch of Koch Brothers, who claims to be giving away millions of dollars to politicians even though I know very few who have seen this (?), now makes the ridiculous statement that what President Trump is doing is unfair to 'foreign workers'” the president tweeted on August 2nd. “He is correct, AMERICA FIRST!”

These are the first five paragraphs of an August 6, 2018 article in The Atlantic.  The links in these paragraphs were in their article.
It’s plausible to dismiss the current feud between Donald Trump and the mogul Charles Koch as merely an alpha-male ego-fest—in the words of the journalist and Koch-watcher Jane Mayer, “a plutocratic pissing match” for control of the Republican Party.  Trump turned up the heat last week when he tweeted that the scion of the conservative donor network was “overrated,” which may be the first time that a president has used the same word to insult Koch and Meryl Streep.

But seasoned Republicans recognize that the feud is symptomatic of broader tensions within the party—Trump’s trade wars clash with the Koch network’s traditional free-market support for open trade—and that the last thing the party needs, in this tough midterm-election year, is to have Koch turn off the money spigot.  Particularly at a time when dozens of House Republican incumbents are raising less than their Democratic challengers.

Granted, the Koch brothers (the ailing brother David has ceded the fight to Charles) never liked Trump.  Two years ago, they deemed him the sole unacceptable candidate in the GOP field. Trump had no conservative pedigree, and Charles Koch clearly laments that the party’s elected lawmakers—many of them beneficiaries of Koch largesse—have embraced Trump’s heresies, thus betraying the core conservative principles that his fundraising network has lavishly financed since its founding in 2003.

That’s why Koch lashed out, at his network’s annual retreat on the last weekend in July, against the “rise in [trade] protectionism,” which is “perverting the key institutions of our society” and heightening the risk of a recession.  Koch denounced the Trump GOP’s deepening of the budget deficit, as evidenced by the recent $1.3 trillion spending deal, and Trump’s plan to throw $12 billion in emergency federal aid to the farmers hurt by his trade wars.  Koch also dislikes Trump’s immigrant bashing and build-a-wall rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the Koch network co-chair Brian Hooks singled out Trump (“The divisiveness of this White House is causing long-term damage”), and he has been seconded by Republicans who share Charles Koch’s displeasure with the party’s pro-Trump tilt.  Rick Tyler, a GOP strategist and a former spokesman for Senator Ted Cruz, says Trump’s party rejects free-market economics. Tyler told me:  “It’s not an ideologically driven party anymore.  It has no ideological coherence.  It now has the characteristics of a cult following.”

I described Donald Trump in similar words in the essay I published on another blog in 2016.  These are the headings of the sections in that essay.
  • His lack of knowledge of the U.S. Constitution
  • His lack of respect for American values
  • Donald loves his family but hates his party
  • He has flexible principles
  • He wants to increase the minimum wage. (Based on this July 27, 2016 Wall Street Journal story.  I also linked to three other sources for the same news.)
  • His sister is an abortion advocate.
  • His wife is unfit to be a goodwill ambassador to many foreign countries. (Based on the nude modeling photos.)
  • He thinks like a dictator.
  • He thinks like a pervert.  (This section includes a video of his own voice.)
  • He encourages cult behavior in his fans.  (This section has one quoted news story and links to nine other publications with similar stories.  They all reported that he said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City and not lose voters.  This section also includes videos from five different news organizations of him saying those words.)
  • He is dishonest and manipulative.
  • I saw this on Twitter August 20th.  This section has a graphic that compares Donald with a small child.)
  • I don't like Hillary or Donald.  This section includes a link to my May 26, 2018 article in American Thinker.
  • For the first time in 128 years ... (The Harvard Republican Club will not endorse the Republican Party's presidential nomineé).

An update to Part 1a of this series, written on July 26, 2018 said that Donald Trump was unprofessional, especially when the professionalism of other jobs is expected and sometimes required by the organizations that give them a license to work.


Sometimes, however, there's a lot of Republican unity

... especially when the Republican President campaigns in person for his closest rival during the 2016 election, and especially when that rival accepts the result of the 2016 election.

These are the first six paragraphs of an October 15, 2018 Dallas Morning News story.
SAN ANTONIO -- President Donald Trump will star at a rally in Houston on Oct. 22 to help Sen. Ted Cruz, the president's campaign announced Monday night.

The president announced last month that he would hold a "major rally" for Cruz at "the biggest stadium in Texas we can find."

That turned out to be the 8,000-seat NRG Arena, which isn't close to the biggest event site even in Houston.

Nearby NRG Stadium, home to the NFL Houston Texans, holds around 80,000 people.  The Toyota Center, home to the Houston Rockets basketball franchise, seats 18,000.

Those seemed to be the sorts of venues Trump had in mind when he announced that he would come to the rescue of a man he derided as "Lyin' Ted" during the 2016 presidential campaign.

"I'm picking the biggest stadium in Texas we can find.  As you know, Ted has my complete and total Endorsement.  His opponent is a disaster for Texas -- weak on Second Amendment, Crime, Borders, Military, and Vets!" Trump tweeted last month.
Although the President did campaign for the Senator, he didn't try to help him as much as he could've helped him.






 The video on the left was uploaded October 20, 2018 by Fox10 in Phoenix, AZ.

Link to a similar video published October 22, 2018 by the NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas.
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