Making of the President 2016

If we win Indiana, it’s over, okay? It’s over. Then we can focus on Crooked Hillary. Please, let’s focus on Crooked Hillary. We’re going to make America great again. I love you. Get out there and vote on Tuesday.

Without a doubt the biggest Republican rival fighting for his party’s nomination was Ted Cruz. At least that’s what most Americans may have thought. Cruz foolishly placed himself in the same league as Mr. Trump. As the other candidates fell by the wayside, Ted Cruz found himself square in the sights of Donald Trump. This unenviable position also signified that Cruz was now the sole bearer of the old boy Republican cronyism that in itself caused its own demise. It was a tough choice for Republicans: Republican Trump, or Republican Cruz? Cruz was never particularly popular with the Republican elite leadership in Washington who viewed him as overly religious and self-righteous. Cruz also lacked a strong (Reagan-like) image that has always worked well for Republican candidates. He just looks like a mama’s boy. A little background reminder of what made Cruz so despicable.

After winning the Wisconsin primary with 48% and 36 delegates, Cruz announced “Let me just say: Hillary, get ready. Here we come!” Cruz should have known you can’t win your party’s nomination based on one primary. His confidence was as fleeting as his winning streak. Cruz had tried to make the lack of support from the Republican Party establishment evidence that he was an “outsider.” Cruz’s claim of not being a tool of the political elite is like Bill Clinton telling the world, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Cruz has become quite adroit at saying one thing while his history shows him doing the other. Rather than the outsider he claims to be, Ted Cruz is the ultimate insider, former top Bush 41 policy aide, a globalist, an Ivy Leaguer, and a quintessential establishment career politician.

There is no better example of this than Calgary Ted’s actions surrounding the big Wall Street banks and their secret funding of his political ascension. Cruz has been gorging at the table of the ultimate insider of all insiders—Goldman Sachs and Citibank. You may recall in a recent Fox Business Network debate that Cruz, in “Mr. Haney from Green Acres” voice, declared to one of the moderators, “The opening question [moderator Jerry Seib] asked—would you bailout the big banks again—nobody gave you an answer to that. I will give you an answer—absolutely not.”2 Cruz is a scoundrel and what else would you expect a scoundrel to say who had secretly secured big sweetheart loans from Goldman and Citibank—by leveraging his retirement accounts—to fund his 2012 US Senate campaign. Loans which Calgary Ted conveniently forgot to disclose to the Federal Election Commission.3 These are the very retirement accounts that he said he and his wife said he cashed in to fund his senate race. In other words, Ted lied. At the same time Ted’s bulging 2016 campaign accounts and supporting Super-PACs were stuffed with big oil and gas money. He knew how to play the game.

And perhaps the ultimate hypocrisy of the native born Canadian is that his spouse, Heidi, by all accounts a lovely wife and mother, had been employed by Goldman Sachs since 2005. She was on leave as managing director and regional head of private wealth management. Heidi is a proud member of the lefty Council on Foreign Relations, advocates of one world government and the New World Order. Heidi was one of 31 members assigned to the task force that produced the “Building a North American Community” report. The 2005 report by the Task Force on the Future of North America was co-authored by task force vice chairman Robert A. Pastor, then the director of the Center for North American Studies at American University in Washington, DC, Pastor was dubbed “the father of the North American Union” for the influence the CFR report had on a tripartite summit meeting between the heads of state of the United States, Mexico and Canada. The meeting culminated in President George W. Bush declaring without congressional approval the formation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.4

Heidi is not a big player in the Cruz campaign with those credentials but rather an integral part of the campaign’s fundraising efforts. As reported by CNN last year, “She works the phones the way she worked them when she was at Goldman,” said Chad Sweet, the Cruz campaign’s chairman, who recruited Heidi to work at the giant investment bank.”5 Yet we are to believe that the big Wall Street banks have no leverage over Ted Cruz? Why didn’t Heidi Cruz resign from Goldman Sachs instead of taking a leave of absence? That’s like saying Bill Ayers and Saul Alinsky have had no influence on Barack Obama. The other inside connection that hits one like a baseball bat is the Bush connection. Also conveniently missing from Heidi’s Wikipedia bio is her service as Deputy US Trade Representative to USTR head Robert Zoellick. At USTR Heidi worked on United States-China trade policy—the one Donald Trump talks about so much.

Ted was George W.’s brain when he ran for president. A top policy adviser, Ted maneuvered for Solicitor General in Bush World but settled for a plum at the Federal Trade Commission. Ted’s a Bushman with deep ties to the political and financial establishment. Ted and Heidi brag about being the first “Bush marriage”—they met as Bush staffers and that meeting ultimately led to matrimony. Ted was an adviser on legal affairs while Heidi was an adviser on economic policy and eventually director for the Western Hemisphere on the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice. Condi helped give us the phony war in Iraq. And Chad Sweet, Ted Cruz’s campaign chairman, is a former CIA officer. Michael Chertoff, George W. Bush’s former Secretary of Homeland Security, hired Sweet from Goldman Sachs to restructure and optimize the flow of information between the CIA, FBI and other members of the national security community and DHS. Chertoff and Sweet co-founded the Chertoff Group upon leaving the administration. Despite Cruz’s ability to lie with a straight face—a trait sadly Nixonian—trying to hide his support for amnesty and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, Cruz got nailed by Senator Marco Rubio during the GOP primary debates. Acting like a prick in the US Senate was the core of Ted’s disciplined effort to bury his old school ties and reinvent himself as a modern-day Jesse Helms. Cruz’s attempt to present himself during the 2016 presidential campaign as a conservative outsider was a joke. It was all a ruse—a makeover—designed to mask the truth that Cruz was a longtime Washington insider with New World Order globalist credentials.

As we got closer to the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary, Cruz and his establishment puppet masters engaged in an aggressive strategy against Trump. Cruz’s managers tried to get away with presenting the false narrative that Cruz was the real outsider, while arguing that Trump was really an insider. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In its most simplistic terms—the power elite had no leverage over Trump—nothing. Cruz, on the other hand, is the establishment’s quisling, spawned by the Bushes and controlled by Wall Street. Cruz became a strident “outsider” only four years ago. Don’t get me wrong. Ted Cruz is a smart, canny, talented guy who ran a great “long race” campaign. He aspires to be Reagan but, trust me, he’s Nixon—right down to the incredible discipline and smarts playing the political game. Ted Cruz is not who he appears to be. Heidi Cruz recently said that her husband’s candidacy was showing America “the face of God whom they serve.” Heidi has it wrong however, for Ted Cruz is more reminiscent of Elmer Gantry, the sleazy sociopathic preacher created by novelist Sinclair Lewis in the 1920s. No Heidi, we don’t see the face of God in Ted Cruz. We see someone who appears to not have a conscience, only self-interest. We see someone who presents himself with high morals and philosophy, yet underneath it all has a criminal mind. We see a calculating politician who will lie, cheat, steal, and incite emotional chaos to win. We see someone who is masterfully adept at turning one group of people against another group, all the while proclaiming himself to be the one true savior. It gets worse.

It was disturbing enough when Senator Ted Cruz announced that Neil Bush, brother of Jeb and George W., would be the finance chairman of his campaign. Neil defrauded US taxpayers out of $1.5 billion in a savings and loan scam involving Silverado Bank in Denver Colorado in the 1990s.6 Now however, Cruz announced key appointments that should have disturbed voters even more. Cruz named Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm as his economic guru. This guy virtually crashed the US economy. Gramm is largely responsible for passing the enabling legislation behind the speculative subprime real-estate bubble that popped in September 2008, just in time to propel Barack Obama into the White House. First was his Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill in 1999, repealing key features of the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act that had separated investment banking from commercial banking. Its repeal—which was signed into law by President Clinton, with the backing of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers—opened the door for a flood of money, from commercial banks, to flow into mortgage-backed securities and other funny-money schemes. The second bill was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) passed in 2000, freeing derivative trading from any regulatory oversight. This was another brilliant bill we owe to former US Senator Phil Gramm from Texas and the time he spent chairing the Senate Banking Committee.

On Tuesday, January 26, 2016, Donald Trump made the controversial decision to not participate in the Fox News debate scheduled to be held two days later, on Thursday, January 28, in Des Moines, Iowa, with the hosts once again listed as Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace—the same lineup as had hosted the first GOP primary debate on August 6, 2015. The decision was particularly controversial in that the Iowa GOP caucus meetings were scheduled for the next week and Trump was running neck-to-neck in the Iowa polls with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both of whom had made major investments building a ground game in the state. As his reason for cancelling, Trump charged that Fox News was “playing games” with him, with most suspecting Trump had not yet given up the feud with Megyn Kelly, whom Trump was still calling a “lightweight reporter.”7 The controversial decision made it clear Trump still intended to play by his own rules.

Instead of attending the seventh GOP primary debate, Trump held a competing event in Des Moines, Iowa, raising $6 million for US military veterans, causing Reuters to report that Trump “managed to upstage the event with a typical dramatic flourish.”8

This was not the first brush-up over debate moderators. On October 30, 2015, the RNC Chairman, in a letter to NBC News chief Andrew Lack, informed the television news network the RNC was suspending its partnership with NBC, effectively barring NBC from televising a GOP primary debate scheduled for February 26, 2016, opening up the broadcast rights to others. The RNC was upset at CNBC’s handling of the GOP primary debate held on October 28, 2015, at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Associated Press reported that Republicans were angered by what they considered petty, non-substantive questions by CNBC debate moderators Carl Quintanilla, Becky Quick, and John Harwood, designed to embarrass the candidates. The AP noted in particular that Harwood had asked Trump whether he was running a “comic-book version of a presidential campaign.”9

As it turned out, on Monday, February 1, 2016, Trump narrowly lost the Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz, who received 27.6 percent of the votes counted in the caucus meetings, with Trump at 24.3 percent, and Rubio at 23.1 percent. Given the peculiarities of GOP primary contests, the Iowa caucus procedure was complicated, involving a series of local meetings in which supporters of various candidates needed to win a majority in that particular caucus. The outcome was equally complicated in that the Iowa caucuses were a proportional election, not a winner-take-all vote, with the result that Cruz won 8 delegates, while Trump and Rubio each won 7 delegates.

Surprisingly, Rubio was the candidate to gain the most momentum coming out of the Iowa caucus meetings, even though he ended up in third place. The media spin that Rubio had come within striking distance of Trump and Cruz led to a fundraising bonanza, with Rubio’s campaign picking up $2 million within twenty-four hours of Iowa voting.10 Rubio was compared with McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012, when both lost the Iowa caucuses only to win the New Hampshire primary the following week with strong performances that propelled each to the GOP nomination.

When entrance polls taken at the start of the 2016 Iowa caucuses showed late-deciders and Evangelical Christians trended toward Cruz and Rubio, pundits and the mainstream media again saw dark signs for the Trump campaign.

It is important to note that the recent history of the GOP Iowa caucuses suggests that the winner in Iowa does not necessarily predict the winner of the GOP nomination. “Just twice in 40 years has the GOP caucus winner gone on to claim the nomination in campaigns with no incumbent Republican president,” wrote reporters Bill Barrow and Emily Swanson for the Associated Press. “But the details behind Cruz’s victory and Rubio’s climb raise new questions about Trump’s turnout operation and his ability to turn his consistently front-running poll numbers into actual votes; and that increases pressure on Trump to deliver a victory next Tuesday in New Hampshire or risk damaging his strategy of campaigning as the inevitable nominee at the head of a fractured field.”11

Following their poor performances in the Iowa caucuses, the three GOP candidates with the fewest votes suspended their campaigns: Sen. Rand Paul, who won 1 delegate in Iowa; former Governor Mike Huckabee, who won the Iowa GOP caucuses in 2008; and former Sen. Rick Santorum, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2012.

As the Iowa caucuses were already underway, Rep. Steve King, the chairman of the Cruz campaign in Iowa, posted two tweets that caused a firestorm. During the Iowa Caucus, Ben Carson had commented to the media that he might be heading home to Florida before going to New Hampshire to get “some new clothes.” This prompted King to tweet at 8:19 pm local time on February 1, “Skipping NH [New Hampshire] & SC [South Carolina] is the equivalent of suspending. Too bad this information won’t get to all caucus goers.” Then, one minute later, at 8:20 pm local time on the night of February 1, King posted a second tweet, “Carson looks like he is out. Iowans need to know before they vote. Most will go to Cruz, I hope.” King included in both tweet messages a link to a tweet posted at 7:43 pm local time that evening by Chris Moody, the senior reporter for CNN Politics. Moody had tweeted, “Carson won’t go to NH [New Hampshire]/ SC [South Carolina], but instead will head home to Florida for some R&R. He’ll be in DC Thursday for the National Prayer Breakfast.”12

“Very dishonest” is how Carson ripped Cruz’s campaign for what he suspected was an underhanded strategy to dampen his vote while the caucuses were happening. “For months, my campaign has survived the lies and dirty tricks from my opponents who profess to detest the games of the political class, but in reality are masters of it,” Carson said in a statement issued the next day. “Even tonight, my opponents resorted to political tricks by tweeting, texting and telling precinct captains that I had suspended my campaign—in some cases asking caucus goers to change their votes,” Carson said of Iowa’s caucuses Monday night.” Carson left no doubt he felt this involved foul play. “One of the reasons I got into this race was to stop these deceptive and destructive practices, and these reports have only further steeled my resolve to continue and fight for ‘We the People,’ and return control of the government back to them,” Carson said.13

King defended his twitter messages, arguing that when he got the report from CNN’s Chris Moody, he told his chief of staff, “We can’t ask people to caucus and vote for a candidate who is now in high likelihood dropping out.”14 Trump was not sympathetic. On February 3, 2016, the Washington Post reported that Trump, the second place finisher in Iowa, was claiming Cruz intentionally misled Iowa voters that Monday night to believe candidate Ben Carson was quitting the race, calling for Cruz’s victory to be invalidated and new voting to take place. “Ted Cruz did not win Iowa, he stole it,” Trump said in a Twitter post on Wednesday morning. “That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got more votes than anticipated. Bad!” In a subsequent tweet, Trump elaborated, “Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.” The Washington Post reported that on the ground during the Iowa caucus voting, Cruz staffers at several precincts began telling voters about Carson’s departure, in an apparent attempt to discourage them from voting for Carson on the assumption that a vote for Carson would be a wasted vote.15

The Cruz campaign responded to Trump’s tweets by calling him “a sore loser.” On February 12, 2016, Politico reported that in little more than 24 hours, Trump had tweeted six times with some variation of the theme that “the Texas senator is not truthful.” Politico noted that Trump’s tweets started with an accusation that Cruz was making negative robo-calls. When Cruz denied the allegations to reporters before a rally in Fort Mill, South Carolina, Trump tweeted in response, “We are getting reports from many voters that Cruz people are back to doing very sleazy and dishonest ‘push polls’ on me. We are watching!” In subsequent tweets, Trump linked Cruz’s denials of push polls with Cruz’s lies regarding Ben Carson. As the war of tweets escalated, Trump’s designation of Cruz as “Lying Ted” was born. “Lying Ted Put out a statement, ‘Trump & Rubio are w/Obama on gay marriage.’” Trump tweeted. “Cruz is the worst liar, crazy or very dishonest.”16

Ever wonder why Donald Trump bestowed the nickname “Lyin’ Ted” upon Ted Cruz?

Obviously, Trump must have thought that Ted had lied at some point during the campaign. It’s an understatement, however, to say merely that Cruz lied “at some point” in the campaign. Ted may be the most prolific liar ever to run for president! I realized it as it happened, but for the readers benefit I’ll run through some glaring examples that I fact checked for this writing.

Ted would have us believe that he’s the only senator who stood and fought against immigration amnesty, Obamacare, and Planned Parenthood. In what he described as his fight against the establishment, he stood firm, refusing to bow to pressure. It makes for good campaign rhetoric but the truth is different. Ted described his battle against Marco Rubio who supported a massive amnesty plan, by saying “I have never supported legalization. I led the fight against [Rubio’s] legalization and amnesty.” The phrase “I have never supported legalization” is an outright lie. As far back as his work for the Bush campaign where he was a policy adviser on immigration reform, and again as a board member of the Washington based Hispanic Alliance for Prosperity Institute, Cruz worked and drafted policies that allowed undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and pursue legal status. More recently, in January 2013, when a group of eight senators issued an immigration reform proposal that included a path to citizenship Cruz could have ruled against it. He made no commitment and for months refused to answer questions as to whether he would vote for or against the proposal.

Cruz then crafted an amendment which he pushed giving “legal status without citizenship.” His amendment didn’t make it, but Cruz wasn’t about to admit that he was for a path to legalization. He strategized to stay in the middle so he can appear to be pro or con depending on what is most beneficial for Cruz at the time. Directly on point, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, unable to confirm Cruz position one way or the other, concluded on December 15: “Cruz positioned himself in a way so that he would appear pro-legalization if an immigration overhaul passed, or appear anti-legalization if hard liner stances became more acceptable.”17 By January 2016, Cruz announced that every measure he proposed in the bill was a plot to sabotage the bill. In other words, his efforts to add the “legalization without citizenship” were a ruse, a fake, as Greta Van Susteren put it in an interview with Cruz in December 2015. Van Susteren couldn’t believe it. She asked in astonishment, “A poisoned pill, designed to kill the whole bill?” Cruz answered, “And it succeeded.” What kind of man can weave a story like that? If he wasn’t lying before, then he’s lying now. If he’s not lying now, then he was lying before. Twisted. It caused a journalist on the left to claim Cruz “may be the most spectacular liar ever to run for president,” and that assessment was unfortunately accurate.18

Another Ted Cruz lie is when he says he’s anti-Wall Street and opposed to the government bank bailout. In fact, during the campaign, as I wrote earlier, Ted’s wife Heidi, took temporary leave from her job as managing director at Goldman Sachs that took a $10 billion bailout! The Cruzes took low interest loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank but failed to report them. This brings us to his statement that “all of the information” about large loans he received to help finance his 2012 Senate campaign “has been public and transparent for many years.” FactCheck.org once again says the loans were not transparent.19 Cruz did not disclose that he had obtained loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank that combined were worth between $350,002 and $750,000 until July 9, 2012. That was after his May 29, 2012, primary election, and after he had already loaned his campaign nearly a million dollars. Cruz took out another Goldman Sachs loan for between $100,001 and $250,000 for his 2012 campaign, but that wasn’t reported on his financial disclosure report until May 15, 2013—by which time he was already a US senator. As FactCheck.org stressed, on both reports, Cruz did not report the loans were for his campaign. That was not required by the ethics law, because those forms are simply intended to disclose personal finances (assets, liabilities, etc.). But he should have reported using the loans for his campaign in separate campaign reports with the Federal Election Commission. He did not.20

Cruz has made much of his qualifications for president and specifically in appointing a Supreme Court justice sighting that he has argued cases nine times before the Supreme Court and, as his campaign ad claimed, he won them all. Not true according to FactCheck.org. Cruz did argue nine cases but only won two, the rest being either losses or partial victories.21

Just before the February Iowa Caucus, voters received in the mail what looked like a government document. With official looking language screaming, “Election Alert” and “Voter Violation,” the notice appeared to be a report on the recipient’s participation in recent elections. The notice might have been relevant if voting were mandated by law, but in Iowa where voting is voluntary, there is no justification for threatening voters that they might be in serious violation of voting laws if they did not show up for the Iowa Caucus. The recipient and the recipient’s neighbors were given grades, scored with “F” for “Failing” if their attendance in recent elections was not perfect. Language in the notice implied the Iowa Secretary of State and/or county election clerks were responsible for producing the mailing from “official public records.” That wasn’t true. Iowa’s Republican Secretary of State, Paul Pate, told the Daily Mail that Cruz’s propaganda piece “misrepresents the role of my office, and worse, misrepresents Iowa election law.” Cruz responded by saying he would not apologize and would “use every tool we can to drive Iowans to the polls.”22

Cruz even lied about an exchange he had with his wife regarding financing his campaign. He recalled saying to his wife in the weeks before his Senate primary, when he was still behind in the polls, “Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, and put it into the campaign.” “What astonished me, then and now, was Heidi within 60 seconds said, ‘Absolutely,’ with no hesitation.” Heidi Cruz tells a different story. She told Politico she “wanted him to raise money from elsewhere first, to show that the support was out there.” And even then, “She proposed that they not put their own cash into the campaign unless it made the difference between winning and losing.”23 There are so many lies spilling out of Ted’s mouth that it would take an entire book to list them all. One wonders were Cruz learned or acquired his gift for lying.

One has to look no farther than his father Rafael Cruz. This man has lied about every single detail of his life. He’s constructed an alternative, completely artificial life story in order to preach a rags-to-riches-to-rags narrative about how he was saved by Jesus—an elaborate fabrication that Ted often retells and frequently embellishes. Embellishes a lie? Oh yes. Why not? The elder Cruz makes much of his story that he grew up in an oppressed and militarized Cuba under the regime of Fulgencio Batista. Then at the age of 14, he joined the “revolution” and spent the next four years “involved in sabotage, propaganda, weapons training and so forth and so on.” Later he claims he was “arrested and brutally beaten, tortured every four hours for four days.” On the fourth night of being kicked and beaten until he lost consciousness, he was given a tour of Matanzas (the city of his confinement) so that he could “see what he was going to miss when they killed him.” The next morning, he was miraculously released and told they would come after him if any more bombs went off. Ted has embellished this statement adding that his father had his top row teeth kicked out. As the story continues, Rafael’s father picks up his son from the detention center and drives him home. An hour later Rafael is told to leave Cuba by a mysterious woman from “the underground.” He had been a straight “A” student in high school, so he decides to go to college in America. He writes three letters to Universities, one of which accepts him. Rafael then trots over to the American Embassy where he gets a four-year student visa. A friend of the family bribes somebody in the government to stamp Rafael’s Cuban passport. (Rafael later changed this to “I convinced the Cuban government to let me leave the country on a student visa.”) He then hides in his father’s car, on the floor of the back seat, and is driven to the ferry to Key West, USA. There are so many holes and lies in this tale it’s disgusting. According to author Paul LeBon who has spent almost 60 years developing deep friendships with actual Cuban revolutionary heroes and their families, Cruz’s story is a pack of lies.24

The revolution was not going on when Cruz was in ninth grade at the age of 14. Castro’s revolution did not commence full-bore until Cruz was 18, in 1957. There was no on-going revolution between 1953 and 1957. The revolution was a one-day attack by Castro and his supporters against the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953, that Batista’s military troops put down. Many were killed and Castro was deported to Mexico in 1955. There were no high school students involved. In fact, the Moncada raid occurred before Rafael Cruz even entered the ninth grade.

According to Cubans who were there at the time, the policy of Batista was not to torture a prisoner unless he was a high value prisoner believed to have valuable intelligence. The rule was to take prisoners out and shoot them. Rafael is lying about his arrest and torture. If he was so badly tortured (he never describes how) how was it possible for him to go on a joy ride to see the city lights on the fourth night of his confinement in a jeep with four police? Then, he was released the next morning? His father picks him up and drives him home? What about his wounds, his broken ribs, his knocked out teeth, his black and blue puffed up face? Did they burn him with cigars? Remember he was tortured every four hours for four days straight. Grown men have crumbled under torture. He was a kid who had zero status in the revolution, if we were to believe he was a revolutionary at all. How was he able to maintain straight “A” grades through high school when he says he spent that time hundreds of miles away fighting in the revolution? A child aged 14 to 17 would not be able to attend school and fight a war (which wasn’t happening at that time) so far away.

How did Rafael Cruz know which American universities to write to? He states that he didn’t speak a single word of English yet he writes to universities asking for admittance? He sent no transcripts, no statement of family financial condition, no formal application, just barely two months before school was scheduled to start. Yet, he was accepted within a couple of weeks? How is that possible?

Regarding the four-year student visa he was given by the American Embassy, student visas are granted one year at a time and have to meet certain requirements. In 1957, applicants for student visas were required to have sufficient funds to cover expenses. Applicants had to be fluent enough in English to enable them to undertake a full course of study. By Cruz’s own account he only had $100 and knew zero English. By any account, he would have been denied a one-year student visa. According to a Cuban lawyer well versed in these matters, getting a student visa from the American embassy in Cuba would have taken a long time. You had to make an appointment. You had to keep the appointment to apply for the visa in person. Then the US embassy had to verify the information. Then another appointment was required to finalize the paperwork.

Cruz claimed someone bribed an official to stamp his exit passport. Oh, right. Then the story morphed from the bribery claim to a claim Rafael Cruz simply convinced an official to allow him to leave. Why would Rafael Cruz have to hide in his father’s car if he had received permission to leave?

The story gets even more unbelievable when Cruz relates how he entered the United States and traveled to Austin, Texas. He claimed that within 24 hours, the university sent him to the Immigration and the Nationalization Service, the INS, where he received his Social Security card—all in the first 24 hours? But Rafael also told us he spoke no English, stressing that he was in a foreign country where he knew no one and had to figure out how to get around. Where did he get his paperwork? As a foreign national, how did he get a Social Security card at all, let alone in 24 hours? How did he pay for his tuition?

As for his speaking English, the story contradicts itself when Cruz states, “I took the advice of my English teacher in Cuba. I would sit for hours in a movie theater watching the movie over and over again. I taught myself English in one month.” This statement is ridiculous beyond words! (Where in Cuba would they be showing an American film?) I thought he spoke no English. I thought he was fighting in the revolution for four years instead of going to school. How can anyone learn a language by watching a movie over and over again in a month?

So, my point is that Ted Cruz learned to lie from his father. The apple does not fall far from the tree. Ted has retold this fantasy over and over again to illustrate how the American dream can be had. “Just look at my Dad.” Utter nonsense.

Ted Cruz has supported his father’s lies, often inventing new lies, such as telling audiences that his father is a pastor in Dallas. This is odd because Rafael Cruz has never introduced himself as a pastor. If Rafael Cruz was a pastor, where did he go to seminary or theology school? Where is his congregation? The sad conclusion is that Rafael and his son Ted Cruz are both con artists of the worst type.

In truth, Rafael Cruz was born into a prosperous middle class family, with connections in the government. Once in the United States, he fathered two children while attending school in Austin. After fathering the two children, Rafael abandoned this family to run off to Canada. The “other woman” in Canada bore Rafael two more children, one of whom was Ted Cruz.

After losing narrowly to Cruz in Iowa, the Trump campaign quickly changed strategy for the New Hampshire primary, scheduled eight days later, on Tuesday, February 9, 2016. Reluctantly, Trump campaign insiders conceded that Trump’s failure to participate in the Fox News debate held in Des Moines on the eve of the Iowa caucuses most likely hurt Trump. Also apparent was that Cruz had taken the Iowa caucuses much more seriously than Trump, as reflected by the amount of time and money the Cruz campaign devoted to building an organization in Iowa. Trump needed to demonstrate he could translate the massive crowds he was drawing at rallies into winning votes. Trump increased the number of daily planned events in New Hampshire and intensified his pressure to rack up dozens of local endorsements. “Trump’s New Hampshire organization has, for months, appeared more robust than the operation he’d put together in Iowa. He’s racked up dozens of endorsements, and his Manchester campaign headquarters is large and brimming with staff and volunteers placing calls,” the Associated Press reported. “Trump remains far ahead in polls in the state, which is generally considered far friendlier turf for the billionaire businessmen. The electorate tends to favor more moderate candidates, making him a more natural fit than he was in evangelical-dominated Iowa, despite his efforts to appeal to the group.”25

At the ABC-hosted GOP debate held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, on February 6, 2016, the Saturday before the Tuesday primary, Rubio made a serious tactical error. Considered “one of the worst nights of his entire campaign,” Rubio repeated himself three times in a prolonged exchange as he struggled to defend himself against New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who “brought out the knives” over Rubio’s relative inexperience.26 Rubio’s offending statement repeated almost word-for-word in answering Christie was this: “Here’s the bottom line. This notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true. He knows exactly what he’s doing.” On the fourth time repeating the line, Christie interjected: “This is what Washington, DC, does. The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him.” The audience in the hall applauded. Christie continued: “See, Marco, the thing is this. When you’re President of the United States, when you’re a governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn’t solve one problem for one person. They expect you to plow the snow. They expect you to get the schools open. And when the worst natural disaster in your state’s history hits you, they expect you to rebuild their state, and that is what I’ve done.” Christie ended the rebuke by adding, “None of that stuff happens on the floor of the United States Senate. It’s a fine job, I’m glad you ran for it, but it does not prepare you to be the president of the United States.”27

The Associated Press delivered a verdict against Rubio following the New Hampshire debate that no presidential candidate ever wants to hear. “Rubio experienced his worst moment in a presidential debate at the worst time, stumbling badly when forced to answer the fundamental question posed by rivals of his candidacy: whether he has the experience necessary to lead the nation,” the AP wrote. “It was a cringe-worthy moment for Rubio three days before a New Hampshire contest in which he hopes to knock Christie, Bush and Ohio Governor John Kasich from the race. Even if it doesn’t significantly change the contest in New Hampshire, the moment raises questions about Rubio’s readiness to take on Democrat Hillary Clinton in a general election debate.”28

Trump easily won the New Hampshire primary, with 35.2 percent of the vote, compared to 15.7 percent for Kasich in second place, 11.6 percent for Cruz in third place, and 10.5 percent for Rubio in a distant fifth place. As a result of getting less than the minimum 10 percent of the vote needed to get delegates from the state or to qualify for the next debate to be scheduled by CBS, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, and Jim Gilmore all suspended their campaigns, leaving six contenders yet in the field. In another proportional contest, Trump picked up 11 delegates, compared to 4 delegates for Kasich, and 2 delegates each for Cruz and Rubio. With a win considered convincing, the GOP presidential primary contest boiled down to Trump versus Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Carson, and Bush.

The first round of early primaries ended with South Carolina on February 20, 2016, followed by Nevada on February 23, 2016. Trump again won both easily, capturing 32.5 percent of the vote in South Carolina to win 50 delegates in that state’s winner-take-all contest, and 45.7 percent in Nevada where he picked up another 14 delegates in a proportional race.

At the end of the Nevada primary, the field was quickly narrowing to Trump versus Cruz and Rubio, as Bush dropped out after South Carolina, while Kasich and Carson each failed to win 10 percent of the primary votes in either state.

At this point, Trump was ahead with 82 delegates, compared to 17 for Cruz, and 16 for Rubio—still far short of the 1,237 delegates needed to win on the first ballot.

As the campaign heated up, Trump and Cruz began a series of back and forth verbal lashings. On September 23, 2016, Katie Reilly published in Time Magazine a list she compiled of 14 times Donald Trump and Ted Cruz insulted each other.29 Here’s her list:

1. Trump: Cruz is “worse than Hillary.”: “He said with being a Canadian citizen, he said, ‘Oh I didn’t know that.’ How did he not know that? Then he said with the loans, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that,’ Smart guy. He doesn’t know that? Yeah, that’s worse than Hillary when you think about it,” Trump said about Cruz on January 20.

2. Trump: “How can Ted Cruz be an Evangelical Christian?”: “How can Ted Cruz be an Evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest?” Trump tweeted on February 12.

3. Trump: “You are the single biggest liar.’”: “You are the single biggest liar. You probably are worse than Jeb Bush,” Trump told Cruz at a primary debate on February 13. “Nasty guy. Now I know why he doesn’t have one endorsement from any of his colleagues.”

4. Trump: “I will spill the beans on your wife!”: “Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!” Trump tweeted on March 22.

5. Cruz: “Real men don’t attack women.”: “Donald, real men don’t attack women. Your wife is lovely, and Heidi is the love of my life,” Cruz tweeted on March 24, after Trump shared an unflattering comparison of Melania Trump and Heidi Cruz.

6. Cruz: “Donald, you’re a sniveling coward”: “It is not acceptable for a big, loud New York bully to attack my wife. It is not acceptable for him to make insults, to send nasty tweets—and I don’t know what he does late at night, but he tends to do these at about 11:30 at night, I assume when his fear is at the highest point,” Cruz said on March 24. “I don’t get angry often. But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that’ll do it every time. Donald, you’re a sniveling coward. Leave Heidi the hell alone.”

7. Cruz: “Consistently disgraceful”: “Donald Trump’s consistently disgraceful behavior is beneath the office we are seeking and we are not going to follow,” Cruz tweeted on March 25.

8. Cruz: “Nominating Donald Trump would be a train wreck”: “Nominating Donald Trump would be a train wreck. It would be handing the White House over to Hillary Clinton,” Cruz tweeted on March 29.

9. Cruz: “Big government liberal”: “This race is simple. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both big government liberals,” Cruz tweeted on April 26.

10. Trump: Cruz’s father was somehow involved with JFK’s assassination: “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being—you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said about Cruz’s father, Rafael, in an interview on May 3. “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.”

11. Cruz: “This man is a pathological liar”: “This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth, and in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology text book, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying,” Cruz told reporters on May 3. “The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist—a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen. Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’” “The man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him,” Cruz added. “Donald is a bully…. Bullies come from a deep, yawning cavern of insecurity.”

12. Cruz: “Vote your conscience”: “And to those listening, please, don’t stay home in November,” Cruz said on July 20 in his, speech at the Republican National Convention, declining to endorse Trump. “If you love our country, and love your children as much as I know that you do, stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

13. Cruz: “I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father”: “I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,” Cruz said on July 21, after declining to endorse Trump in his convention speech. “What does it say when you stand up and say, ‘Vote your conscience,’ and rabid supporters of our nominee begin screaming, ‘What a horrible thing to say,’” Cruz said. “If we can’t make the case for the American people that voting for our party’s nominee is consistent with voting your conscience, is consistent with defending freedom and being faithful to the Constitution, then we are not going to win and we don’t deserve to win.”

14. Trump: “He may have ruined his political career”: “Honestly, he may have ruined his political career. I feel so badly. I feel so badly. And you know, he’ll come and endorse over the next little while. He’ll—because he has no choice. But I don’t want his endorsement. What difference does it make? I don’t want his endorsement. I have such great—I don’t want his endorsement. Ted, stay home, relax, enjoy yourself,” Trump said at a press conference on July 22.

Eleven states headed to the polls on March 1, 2016, known as Super Tuesday I, with 595 delegates at stake in the GOP primaries, nearly half the 1,237 needed to guarantee winning on the first ballot at the RNC in Cleveland that July.

As Super Tuesday approached, Trump phoned in to ABC’s “Good Morning America” to once again deny media attempts to pin him together with white supremacist David Duke, a onetime Ku Klux Klan leader based in New Orleans. After disavowing any connection to David Duke, Trump told the network, “There’s nobody who’s done more for equality than I have.”30 This was an issue that dogged Trump with the Washington Post, for instance, digging up comments Trump had made about David Duke tracing back to 1991 to argue that Trump “generally does not couple his statements about Duke with a firm condemnation of Duke’s views.”31

The controversy began on February 29, 2016, when CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview with Trump had pushed Trump “to publicly condemn universally the racism of former KKK grand wizard Duke,” urging Trump to affirm that he did not want David Duke’s vote or the vote of any other white supremacist in the 2016 election. As the Washington Post reported, Trump answered Tapper insisting, “I don’t know anything about David Duke. Okay? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy. So I don’t know. I don’t know—did he endorse me, or what’s going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists.”32

Still, by Super Tuesday I, the mainstream media persisted with the issue, sensing the question would drive a wedge between Trump and African-American voters. Tapper had just executed a classic “gotcha,” in that he managed to create a controversy over David Duke who was truly nothing more than a passing incidental in the thousands of media interviews Trump has given since 1991. At various times, when asked on television or radio, Trump had acknowledged that David Duke was appealing to a deep sentiment felt by many in Middle America that the far-left agenda that has come to dominate the Democratic Party since the 1960s failed to pay sufficient attention to the legitimate needs of working class Americans. Trump was confused by Tapper’s questions precisely because the issue of David Duke came at Trump out of nowhere. Trump had not solicited David Duke’s support and Trump had no intention of embracing white supremacist racism. Still, the goal of Tapper’s question was to brand Trump and his supporters as secret KKK sympathizers who hated all minorities, all immigrants, and all Muslims.

Despite the determination of the Clinton-supporting mainstream media to trap Trump in diversionary “gotcha” distractions, Middle America saw through the ploy and the polls continued to favor Trump as GOP frontrunner. When the Super Tuesday I primaries were over, Trump walked away winning 7 states and 255 delegates, with victories in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia. Cruz came in second, winning 3 states and 218 delegates, claiming victory in Alaska, Oklahoma, and Texas. Rubio came in third, winning only one state, Minnesota, while adding 96 delegates to his total. Kasich gained 21 delegates, even though he did not win a single state. Carson, who failed to place higher than third in any state contest suspended his campaign, after winning only 3 delegates on Super Tuesday. As a result, when Super Tuesday was over, the GOP primary race narrowed to four candidates: Trump, with 337 delegates, Cruz with 235 delegates, Rubio with 112 delegates, and Kasich with 27 delegates.

The next day, March 3, 2016, Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential candidate who Barack Obama defeated in 2012, delivered a 17-minute speech at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, lambasting Trump’s candidacy, going so far as to call him a “phony” and pressing for a contested convention, realizing that though Trump might win a plurality of convention delegates in the primaries, he may still fall below the 1,237 needed to win on the first ballot. In that eventuality, a candidate like Cruz or Rubio, even though second or third in the delegate count resulting from the primaries, might emerge as the GOP presidential candidate on a second, third, or subsequent ballot should the RNC in Cleveland devolve into a “brokered convention.”33

“Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud,” Romney said in the conclusion to his speech. “His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat.” Romney characterized Trump’s policies as reckless, arguing, “His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe.” As if this were not sufficient, Romney added the following: “He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill. I’m convinced America has greatness ahead. And this is a time for choosing. God bless us to choose a nominee who will make that vision a reality.”34

Romney argued Trump’s nomination would ensure Hillary Clinton’s election. “And the audio and video of the infamous Tapper-Trump exchange on the Ku Klux Klan will play 100,000 times on cable and who knows how many million times on social media,” Romney insisted, receiving laughter and applause from the audience. “There are a number of people who claim that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake—thank you. Let me say that again. There’s plenty of evidence that Mr. Trump is a con man, a fake. Mr. Trump has changed his positions not just over the years, but over the course of the campaign. And on the Ku Klux Klan, daily for three days in a row.”

Later that day, Trump hit back at Romney, during a campaign rally in Portland, Maine. Trump called Romney a “failed candidate” for losing the 2012 election to Obama. “He failed horribly,” Trump continued, insisting that 2012 was an election Romney should have won. “I’m not a fan of Barack Obama and I backed Mitt Romney,” Trump continued. “You can see how loyal he is. He was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, ‘Mitt, drop to your knees.’ He would have dropped to his knees. He was begging.”35 Romney persisted in his attacks on Trump, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview in Park City, Utah, on June 10, 2016, that he would not support the New York businessman’s bid.36 “I simply can’t put my name down as someone who voted for principles that suggest racism, or xenophobia, misogyny, bigotry, who’s been vulgar time and time again,” Romney said, later adding, “I don’t want to see trickle-down racism.” Blitzer asked Romney if there was anything Trump could do to win his support. “I don’t think there’s anything I’m looking for from Mr. Trump to give him my support,” Romney answered. “He’s demonstrated who he is and I’ve decided that a person of that nature should not be the one who, if you will, becomes the example for coming generations.”

Between Super Tuesday I and Super Tuesday II, eight states, two territories—Guam and the Virgin Islands—as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia held their primaries and caucuses. The results of Super Tuesday I were repeated, in that Trump came out on top, winning 5 states—Kentucky, Louisiana, Hawaii, Michigan, and Mississippi—and 140 delegates, followed by Cruz who won 3 states—Kansas, Maine, and Idaho—and 137 delegates, with Rubio in third place, winning Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, followed by Kasich, who again failed to win a state.

Super Tuesday II on March 15, 2016, ushered the first winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Ohio, as well as primaries in Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and the Northern Mariana Islands, with a total of 367 delegates up for grabs. Here, Trump won decisive victories, winning all the Super II primaries, except for Ohio, which went to Ohio’s Governor Kasich. As the voting ended on Super Tuesday, Trump’s delegate total went to 705, with Cruz remaining in second place with 423. With Rubio losing his home state of Florida to Trump, in a 99 delegate winner-take-all primary, Rubio suspended his campaign. The field now narrowed to three contenders: Trump, Cruz, and Kasich. Though in reality, the only questions that remained was whether Cruz could prevent Trump from getting to the all-important 1,237 delegate total, and whether Kasich would have a chance in a RNC convention battle where Trump and Cruz knocked heads as the two favorites. While Cruz was not yet mathematically ruled out from reaching the 1,237-delegate total, he virtually needed to sweep the remaining primaries if he were to have a chance.

After Super Tuesday II, the odds makers continued to calculate that it would be difficult, but not impossible, for Trump to reach the 1,237-delegate goal. “Republican voters handed down a split decision Tuesday that suggests the race for the party’s nomination will go all the way to Cleveland, raising the prospect of a contested convention that could tear the GOP in two,” the political writers at Time Magazine noted. “Donald Trump padded his delegate lead by grabbing the night’s biggest prize, a blowout victory in Florida that knocked Senator Marco Rubio out of the race,” Time Magazine continued. “Trump also snagged victories in Illinois and North Carolina and appeared set to eke out a fourth win in Missouri as the final returns trickled in late Tuesday. But his failure to deliver a knockout blow in Ohio gives him an uphill fight to secure the 1,237 delegates required to win the GOP nomination outright.”37 Fox News correctly observed that after winning Ohio’s primary, Kasich remained in the race, hoping to act as a spoiler. “Even with his Tuesday haul, Kasich remains in fourth place in the GOP delegate count and faces the toughest path to the nomination of the remaining candidates,” Fox News commented. “He has openly said, however, that his hope is to deny Trump the requisite delegates to clinch the nomination before the July convention in Cleveland.”38

Despite being the GOP front-runner virtually from the moment he declared his candidacy, Trump had run with an exceptionally thin campaign staff. Almost from the beginning, his two stalwarts remained his first two hires—Corey Lewandowski, 41 years old when hired and Hope Hicks, 27 years old when hired.

Lewandowski graduated from the New Hampshire police academy in 2006 and served with the New Hampshire state police, before being hired as the New Hampshire director for Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group founded by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch. Before working with Trump, Lewandowski had no experience with a national political campaign.39 In 2002, Lewandowski ran the reelection campaign of US Senator Robert C. Smith in New Hampshire who lost in the Republican primary to challenger John E. Sununu, the son of former New Hampshire Governor and former White House chief of staff John H. Sununu. In 1994, while still a college student, Lewandowski lost a write-in campaign for the Massachusetts House, and in 2012, he ran unsuccessfully for treasurer of Windham, New Hampshire.

Hope Hicks, a child model for Ralph Lauren, entered Trump’s world in 2012 when she began working on Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, while employed by the public relations firm Hiltzik Strategies. In August 2014, Hicks went to work inside the Trump organization, continuing to handle PR work for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line as well as some Trump resorts. Profiled by Cosmopolitan, Hicks was portrayed as a former “college jock” for having played lacrosse for four years for Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where she completed her undergraduate studies.40 Cosmopolitan further reported that in January 2015, when Donald Trump called Hicks into his office and said he was making her an offer to work as press secretary for the upcoming presidential campaign he planned to start in June, Hicks had had no prior political experience.

On March 15, 2016, a Politico trio of reporters led by Kenneth P. Vogel reported that Lewandowski had a history of quick temper and heavy-handed leadership that created such concerns among Trump’s campaign staff that in February 2016, some even planned a coup against him.41 “In interviews with more than 20 sources who have dealt with Lewandowski during his nearly year-long tenure with the Trump campaign and in his previous job with the Koch brothers-backed advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, complaints emerged about Lewandowski being rough with reporters and sexually suggestive with female journalists, while profanely berating conservative officials and co-workers he deemed to be challenging his authority,” Politico reported.

Lewandowski’s claim to fame in his time as Trump campaign manager was his repeated insistence that “Trump should be Trump”—a saying others on the campaign team took as an argument that Trump’s undisciplined, free-wheeling approach was producing results with voters, even if his unscripted often ad-lib comments in speeches created numerous gaffes that took precious campaign time and effort to walk-back. Critics within the Trump camp came to view Lewandowski as a loose cannon with a short fuse, a dangerous combination for a traveling companion on the Trump airplane who had ample time to share with the candidate his antipathy toward colleagues, political opponents, and perceived rivals.

The controversy over Lewandowski blew up on March 8, 2016, following a Trump press conference at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida. This was in the period immediately after Super Tuesday I, during which Trump was making an effort to “pivot” from the more aggressively combative style he had used attacking rival candidates up to that time, into a more diplomatic posture the mainstream media was recommending would be more appropriate for a mature politician during the general election, assuming Trump won the nomination. Lewandowski effectively ended any chance that Trump’s “kinder and gentler” image would persist long when he allegedly grabbed Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, appearing in some videos of the incident to have been making an effort to allow Trump to exit without being followed by reporters continuing to shout questions.

“Addressing the gathered reporters and the nation at large, Trump was in an especially jovial mood Tuesday night,” Michelle wrote, describing the incident in her own words.42 “The networks just declared he had won the Mississippi Republican primary and, during his speech, that he won the Michigan Republican primary as well.”

She continued: “I wasn’t called upon to ask a question during the televised press conference, but afterwards Trump wandered around, stopping at every reporter to take their questions. When he approached me, I asked him about his view on an aspect of affirmative action.”

“Trump acknowledged the question, but before he could answer I was jolted backwards,” Fields recalled. “Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken.”

Washington Post reporter Ben Terris wrote immediately after the incident that it was Lewandowski who aggressively grabbed Fields and “yanked her out of the way.” Terris wrote that Fields stumbled and finger-shaped bruises appeared on her arm43 Fields subsequently posted on Twitter a photograph of the bruise on her arm she claimed resulted from Lewandowski’s attack.44 Hope Hicks issued a statement for the campaign stating Field’s accusation was “entirely false,” claiming she was there as Trump exited the press conference and she “did not witness any encounter.”45

WND reporter Jerome Corsi noted reporter Michelle Fields had been involved in a series of incidents where she “had a history of becoming news,” citing an incident that took place in November 2011 when Fields, then a Daily Caller reporter, claimed she and videographer Direna Cousins “were struck” by NYPD officers as the police tried to clear the street of Occupy Wall Street protesters, as well as an incident in which Fields accused former US congressman Allen West of grabbing her in front of an elevator when they were colleagues at PJ Media.46

On March 8, the police in Jupiter, Florida charged Lewandowski with misdemeanor battery over the incident. Then, on April 14, the Palm Beach County state attorney dropped the charges. CNN reported Lewandowski was relieved the charges were dropped, saying he wanted to move on from the incident that he characterized as a “huge distraction” for the campaign.47 Here, Lewandowski had a valid point. The incident served to fuel various narratives the Clinton-supporting media was aggressively advancing against Trump, claiming the Lewandowski incident validated both Trump’s “war on women” as well as Trump’s propensity to encourage aggressive reactions among his supporters to those in his audiences expressing opposition or dissent to his message.

Throughout the incident, Trump stayed loyal to Lewandowski. On March 11, Trump told CNN that it was his opinion Fields concocted the entire story, portraying herself as a victim in order to replace Trump as the main attraction in the media’s coverage of the campaign. “Everybody said nothing happened,” Trump said. “Perhaps she made the story up. I think that’s what happened.”48 But as the incident settled down and faded away, the dynamics within the Trump campaign changed. Trump and his senior advisors realized that the campaign was shifting into a new dimension. Every day now, the cable news media was running 24-by-7 discussions questioning whether Trump had a “pathway” to reach the 1,237 goal. If Trump was going to become president, he and his campaign had to become more disciplined. Winning the remaining primary contests and corralling convention delegates to vote for Trump as obligated on the first ballot was going to take the type of experienced and mature management skills that Lewandowski so obviously lacked.

On the Friday before Easter, Trump called me at my south Florida home. “Can they really steal this thing from me?” he asked. Remember, that Trump’s call came in the wake of stinging losses in Wisconsin, North Dakota, Colorado and having the Louisiana delegates stolen out from under his nose—even though he had easily won the Louisiana primaries. So his concern was obvious. “Yes, they can steal it, and they will try,” I said. “Even though I won all the primaries?” “Yes, they’re going to play games with the rules.” “What should I do?” the mogul asked. “Call my former partner, Paul Manafort. You’ve met him, he’s a friend of Tom Barrack and he knows more about convention politics than anyone in America.” Trump asked for Manafort’s cell phone number and I provided it.

On March 28, Trump hired veteran Republican strategist Paul J. Manafort to lead his final delegate-corralling efforts. The New York Times commented that Manafort, 66, “is among the few political hands in either party with direct experience managing nomination fights.” The newspaper noted that as a young Republican operative, Manafort helped manage the 1976 convention floor for Gerald Ford in his showdown with Ronald Reagan, the last time Republicans entered a convention with no candidate having clinched the nomination.

The New York Times continued, stressing that Manafort performed a similar function for Mr. Reagan in 1980, and played leading roles in the 1988 and 1996 conventions, for George Bush and Bob Dole. “The hiring is a sign that Mr. Trump is intensifying his focus on delegate wrangling as his opponents mount a tenacious effort to deny him the 1,237 delegates he would need to secure the Republican nomination,” wrote veteran political reporters Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman. “Under those circumstances, Mr. Trump’s opponents hope they can wrest that prize from him in a contested convention.”49

Within a few days, Trump let it be known that Manafort, not Lewandowski, was now the campaign manager. While Trump did not fire Lewandowski, the decision to hire Manafort and appoint him campaign manager effectively demoted Lewandowski to “body man” and a scheduler, whose main assignment was to travel with Trump, while all strategic decisions were now in Manafort’s domain.50

Paul J. Manafort, Jr. grew up in the hardscrabble industrial city of New Britain, Connecticut where his father Paul Manafort, Sr. was the popular Republican Mayor of the overwhelmingly Democratic city. Paul graduated from Georgetown where he became active in the College Republicans and a lifetime adversary of Karl Rove. It was in Young Republicans that Paul, like legendary convention operators F. Clifton White and Bill Timmons, honed his convention tactical skills. In 1976 Jim Baker recruited Manafort to President Gerald Ford’s delegate-counting convention operation. Manafort served as the elected National Auditor of the Young Republican National Federation and was expected to become National Chairman in 1977, but his support of Ford caused a rift in the dominant conservative faction of the Young Republicans. I was supposed to manage Manafort’s campaign, but instead I became the candidate while Manafort managed my raucous convention operation. We won, and I became Young Republican National Federation chair from 1977-79.

I introduced Manafort to Donald Trump at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans. Manafort is the GOP’s master ”vote counter.” His specialty is the ”hard-count” and surprise tactics. With experience managing Gerald Ford’s 1976 nomination fight against Ronald Reagan, and high profile roles in the 1980, 1988 and 1996 conventions, Manafort was sold to the media as Trump’s expert on convention preparation. To the naked eye, he was hired to count delegates and lock the nomination down in Cleveland.

Manafort transformed the billionaire’s unruly and weak primary campaign into a team that could beat the Clinton juggernaut. Coming aboard just days before Trump’s shattering loss to Ted Cruz in Wisconsin, the campaign veteran had his work cut out for him. Paul and I agreed: there was a clear path toward 1,237 delegates, the magic number to gain the nomination. But that meant winning again in the delegate selection, too—a vital part of the primary process that determines precisely who the delegates will be in Cleveland. Control that, and on the convention floor it might not matter who won the state at the ballot box.

There are complexities to delegate counting that only veteran professionals like Manafort appreciate. Vox.com51 published an article in mid-April titled, “Donald Trump’s amazing incompetence at delegate selection, explained,” that revealed just how far behind Trump was in controlling delegates even in states where Trump had won the primary. For instance, all six delegates in South Carolina were officially bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot. But in reality, three were Cruz supporters, and two were uncommitted. That meant that in South Carolina, a state where Trump had won the primary and had all six delegates pledged to vote for him on the first ballot, only one of the six delegates was actually a Trump supporter. This spelled disaster should the convention go to a second or subsequent ballot, in a scenario where Trump failed to get 1,237 delegates on the first ballot. Vox.com noted this basic story was repeating itself in many other states Trump had won. Corey Lewandowski did not have the experience to tackle this level of complexity. It’s not clear Corey even knew this level of complexity existed in the real-world politics involved in securing enough delegates in the primaries who were truly committed to your candidate. Manafort, it turned out, was just what the doctor ordered for candidate Trump to navigate through the primaries to a successful completion.

Before Manafort was hired, the polls pointed to a Wisconsin shellacking. When it came true on April 5, 2016, the loss in the Wisconsin primary took a lot of wind out of the Trump campaign’s sails. From there forward, the billionaire had to win 69 percent of all remaining pledged delegates. That was difficult to do, but possible, especially with Manafort now aboard. After losing the Wisconsin primary to Cruz, Trump had no choice but to win some very competitive primaries. Otherwise, Trump would fail to close the deal. Lewandowski wasn’t up to the task, especially if the contest went all the way to June in California. Trump, throughout his career, has been known for his determination and his ability to close the deal, even if it meant getting a new management team in place right now.

Once Paul landed at Trump Tower, he began to understand just how poorly Lewandowski had managed the primary process. Lewandowski, an inexperienced campaign manager who, once again, had never before participated in a national presidential campaign, had failed to appreciate the importance of investing campaign funds to develop competent state political operations. After each primary or caucus passed, Lewandowski typically fired his in-state staff and moved on. This kept overhead down but, as a result, the complex delegate selection process that followed went untended. Losses in states like Wyoming, Missouri and Utah were scuffing the luster of the billionaire’s primary campaign. By the time Trump lost Wisconsin, his threadbare campaign was showing through and reporters were openly taking bets on when, exactly, the entire show would come crashing to the ground.

When he was hired, I was completely confident Manafort would succeed in righting the ship. Manafort, my partner at a successful Washington lobbying firm with GOP campaign veteran, and top political consultant, Charles Black that we co-founded after we helped elect Ronald Reagan, had excelled at tough, even global assignments. At Black Manafort Stone, he was our lead partner on all international work, including controversial clients like Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Jonas Savimbi, the anti-communist guerilla leader in Angola. In his most notable and recent international work, Paul was senior adviser to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. In completing this assignment, Paul worked on site in Ukraine for seven years, building the President’s powerful Party of Regions. When Yanukovych fled to Mother Russia in the Maidan protests of 2014, Manafort stuck around to pick up the pieces of the party he had built. He stayed active in the region, but Maidan essentially put an end to his long and lucrative political consulting contract in Ukraine.

While these were demanding and lucrative projects, Manafort had learned to move among heads of state like he’s one of them. His ease working with celebrity clients and his mastery of the game made him a perfect advisor to Donald Trump. Signed on just days before an expected loss in Wisconsin, Manafort allowed Lewandowski to fail, while he focused on the subsequent primary contests. With Manafort in place and putting the band back together again, the April 19th New York primary was a lock.

This time around, Michael Caputo served as state director and John Haggerty, one of the smartest political operatives I’ve ever met, ran the show. As the New York primary approached, Trump deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner invited Caputo and Haggerty onto the national payroll. Along with Erie County Republican Chairman Nick Langworthy and State Assemblyman Dave DiPietro, they had locked up 85 percent of the weighted vote of GOP county chairs six weeks out.

Most of the powerful chairmen pledged to Trump for the presidential primary had been assembled in 2014 to back him for governor. Haggerty and the others did a great job reuniting the team. In fact, the 2014 exercise in futility was mighty helpful in shutting down Ted Cruz in 2016. At an April 7th meeting with Caputo, Haggerty and DiPietro in Trump Tower, Manafort reviewed the status of the New York primary and was relieved to hear Cruz had no footing. More than half of New Yorkers polled backed Trump and the way the state cut up its delegates—by congressional district—made it possible for the home state candidate to win every single delegate.

Cruz vied with John Kasich for the scraps left on the table. Haggerty described the team’s goal to Manafort under the glass ceiling of the Tower’s street level atrium: Not one delegate for Kasich, not one delegate for Cruz. Under Buffalo developer Carl Paladino’s state chairmanship, the team had assembled so much support that it was a clear possibility. Trump was far more popular among the more conservative upstate Republicans, and he lagged with New York City’s notorious moderate establishment crowd. He also had soft spots in Syracuse and Paladino had alienated important GOP county chairs in the North Country. Still, Haggerty had assembled a solid plan to get out the vote.

Manafort left the meeting expecting a maximum loss of six to ten delegates, leaving upwards of 90 for Trump. He was confident that Caputo would bring home the win. Like me, Manafort had known Caputo since the eighties, and the Black Manafort team had trained him. This gave Paul some breathing room to fix the national campaign and grow the staff.

As I recounted to then-publisher Stephen Bannon in Breitbart on April 6, 2016, outside the closely run New York campaign, I saw very little Trump infrastructure in the states. The woman who ran Trump’s campaign efforts in Wisconsin previously managed his campaign in Oklahoma. Trump lost both. Prior to that, she had never run any political campaign, so there was no depth of experience. This is something I saw again and again, particularly at the grass roots level.

Now, I salute these people for their enthusiasm, but presidential elections are a science. This is not something we guess about. And Trump was soon to move to a series of states like Colorado, Wyoming and Arizona, which would be watched very carefully. And those were sure to become hand-to-hand combat at state conventions or state committee meetings, where once again the Trump people had built no infrastructure.

It was there, in Colorado, where Lewandowski’s schemes to destroy Manafort first drew media attention. Behind the scenes, Lewandowski fought hard from the moment Manafort arrived to regain his previous power over the campaign and to undermine his far more experienced nemesis, whose expertise eclipsed the presidential first-timer.

Soon, Lewandowski put out a fatwah on Manafort, ordering his charges not to work or even to speak with Manafort or anyone on Manafort’s team. A young operative named James Baker, who Lewandowski himself had recently hired to lead the Colorado campaign, was fired 48 hours after he arrived in the state. His crime, as far as Lewandowski was concerned, was that Baker simply talked with Manafort. Later, Lewandowski was suspected of leaking false and defamatory information to the press about Baker, trying to destroy his reputation, sending a strong message to his team that he viewed working with the new regime as betrayal.

Manafort scrambled to fix delegate selection, pushing past Lewandowski’s sabotage and dispatching experienced operatives to key states. But the operation was on fire. Soon, it hit the press. The Cruz campaign captured all 34 Colorado delegates at a series of congressional district meetings and the state party convention—which took place one week after Lewandowski fired Baker. An early March social media post from a discarded Trump state operative, John Hulsizer, revealed that Lewandowski had intentionally left virtually everyone in the dark about delegate selection. Upset that the process was being ignored, the Trump loyalist asked Lewandowski’s right hand man what was to be done. “When I got my response from Michael Glassner about the delegates I flipped out,” Hulsizer wrote on Facebook. “He said, ‘Mr. Trump doesn’t understand how delegates work, so we are leaving that issue alone right now.’”

Lewandowski’s foolish tactic backfired, of course, and the April 9th Colorado delegate news rocked Trump. The family was aghast at how this vital part of the process had been overlooked. It was at this point that Jared Kushner, Ivanka’s husband, began to be more vocal in his criticism and started to develop a discernable disrespect for Lewandowski and his failures.

On board only a few weeks, the results of Manafort’s work—building a campaign organization from nothing—had not yet borne fruit. Delegate selection failures stacked up. Nick Gass of Politico summed it in just one long, tortuous run-on sentence: “[Beyond Colorado, Trump has] suffered delegate setbacks in Georgia (where one county that went for Trump by 12 points will be represented by 90 percent Cruz backers), Indiana (where Trump appears virtually assured of being shut out), Iowa (where all but one of the state’s 12 delegates is committed to Cruz on a second ballot), Louisiana (where Trump lost 10 delegates and filed a complaint with the RNC), North Carolina (where Trump had fewer congressional level delegates than John Kasich), North Dakota (where Cruz’s delegates won 18 of 25 slots earlier this month), South Carolina (where on Saturday he picked up just one delegate out of six on the ballot), South Dakota (where support for Cruz among delegates would appear higher) and Tennessee (where the Trump campaign also threatened to sue after a heated convention)—mostly at the hands of Cruz.”52

If Manafort had waited one week or two to join the Trump campaign, it may have faltered and failed. Lewandowski’s Wisconsin disaster hit hard but the campaign had a two-week break before New York, which looked to be a winner. But the team who had installed high profile Republicans leading all 27 single congressional districts couldn’t get headquarters staffers’ attention.

Caputo’s associations with Manafort and me were stalling the New York primary team’s efforts to close strong. Bent on stopping our efforts to salvage the campaign, Lewandowski targeted him, too. Caputo’s calls to headquarters went unanswered after he was seen talking animatedly with Manafort at the April 6th Trump rally in Bethpage, New York.

It got worse: even Carl Paladino, Trump’s friend and New York State chairman, got so fed up with the constipation at Trump Tower that he plotted out a series of rallies on his own and sold the schedule to the advance team. If he hadn’t done that, who knows how many delegates Cruz and Kasich would have peeled off.

Attempts to engage hundreds of volunteers and Republican leaders across the state in the GOTV effort fell on deaf ears. In the end, only John Haggerty was able to directly impact the final days of the New York campaign—he was the only member of the New York State campaign working in Trump Tower on primary day April 19th.

No matter: the primary effort was so well organized that Kasich drew just six delegates to Trump’s 89—and Cruz was crushed, not gaining even one. Not even Corey Lewandowski can fuck up a Haggerty operation.

The New York victory party was the start of a series of similar nights of celebration in the Trump Tower lobby. But with Manafort appointed campaign manager, the billionaire was gaining steam once again. After Wisconsin, state after state fell in Trump’s column.

With Manafort in place, the Trump campaign turned its focus on Sen. Ted Cruz, the only remaining candidate with a real potential to play a spoiler role, preventing Trump from reaching the 1,237-delegate goal. This was brought into sharp focus in the GOP primaries held between March 22 and April 19, 2016. Of the eight contests held in that time period, Trump won three states—Arizona, North Dakota, and New York—plus American Samoa, while Cruz won four states—Utah, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Wyoming. While Trump came out ahead gaining another 154 delegates, Cruz was not far behind, winning 123 delegates. Kasich, still in the race, won no states and no delegates in any of these contests.

Trump’s victory in New York meant Cruz was mathematically eliminated from getting to 1,237 delegates, simply because he still needed 678 more while only 674 were remaining. “By just about every metric, Ted Cruz is losing the race for the Republican nomination,” wrote reporter Lauren Fox in TalkingPointsMemo.com on April 21, 2016.53 “After a crushing third place finish in New York Tuesday night, Cruz can no longer win the Republican nomination without a chaotic, contested convention in Cleveland.” Yet, as TPM noted, Cruz was hanging in the race, telling CBS radio in Philadelphia, “At this point nobody is getting 1,237.”

TPM asked whether Cruz had an effective rationale for staying in the race. “While Cruz fares better than Trump against potential Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head matchup, polls still show he would lose to her in November,” Lauren Fox noted. “Ohio Governor John Kasich—as he often reminds voters on the trail—is the only candidate left in the race who consistently shows he can beat Clinton in the general.” TPM further argued that in order to steal the nomination from Trump at a convention in Cleveland, Cruz would need to explain why he actually deserves the nomination. “He can argue that Trump is a disaster for the party,” Lauren Fox continued. “He can argue Trump alienates women. He can keep painting Trump as a phony, shyster conservative who has given money to Democrats. It’s not clear why those arguments, which did not work for other Republican candidates trying to defeat Trump in primary contests, would work in the more difficult task of wresting delegates from him.” TPM also commented that Cruz had to overcome a contradiction inherent to his campaign. “While Cruz has tried to make the case that he is an outsider—the only candidate in the race who can take on the ‘Washington cartel’ and repair the country—his argument at the convention will be that he is the true Republican and Trump the callow insurgent,” Lauren Fox concluded.

On April 4, 2016, Politico reported that after getting shut out in New York, Cruz had begun a process of hunting for “Trojan Horse” convention delegates, defined as delegates with a personal allegiance to a candidate that differs from the way the delegate is obligated to vote on the first ballot.54 Cruz was hunting for both his own delegates, who might waver from him on a second or subsequent ballot in Cleveland, or for Trump delegates in the same position. Politico reported the Cruz team was “logging detailed profiles and loyalty scores of each delegate, honing pitches to convince wavering allies to commit and deploying surrogates to stiffen the spines of wobbly backers.” Politico further reported Cruz’s “delegate whipping effort” drew upon wealthy donors and sophisticated technology, “including Koch brothers-backed i360, Wilson Perkins Allen Research, Targeted Victory and Cambridge Analytica. Combined, they’re helping to build the kind of individualized strategy that the Cruz campaign sees as a backstop against weak-kneed delegates.”

On April 25, 2016, CNN reported Trump’s reaction to Cruz’s “Trojan Horse” strategy. “I just read an article about, Cruz is working really hard to—I don’t want to use the word ‘bribe’—but, to bribe the delegates from all over the place,” Trump said, nearly shouting out the second “bribe.”55 What had become clear was that in the delegate-counting final phase of the GOP primaries, Trump needed the expertise and experience brought to his campaign by Paul Manafort to prevent professional politicians like Cruz from using backroom tactics to rig the delegate count to prevent Trump from getting the nomination.

On March 10, in the run-up to the March 15 Florida primary, Jacob Engels, the founder of the East Orlando Post, published in his newspaper an article entitled, “Ted Cruz, Closet Pentecostal,” in which Engels, a seasoned Florida political operative, questioned Cruz’s claim to be an Evangelical Christian.56 “While Ted Cruz proudly proclaims he is an Evangelical Christian, his campaign takes pains to hide the truth that Cruz and his pastor father, Rafael Cruz are Pentacostal Christians, a fact further hidden by having Ted and Heidi Cruz’s belong to the congregation of First Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist church in Houston, as their home church,” Engels wrote. “Pentecostals believe the Apostles of Jesus were aided by the Holy Spirit’s ‘gift of tongues,’ in what Pentecostals consider as ‘baptism by the Holy Spirit,’ deriving from 1 Corinthians 12:14, that gave the Apostles the ability to speak in a ‘God-enabled prayer language’ that Pentecostals believe permits even today allows the unintelligible human utterances of a Pentecostal evangelist to be understood by foreigners who do not speak the Pentecostal evangelist’s language,” Engels stressed.

Engels noted that reporter Sarah Pulliam Bailey, writing in the Washington Post on March 25, 2015 was the first to recognize Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign logo and the purifying tongue-of-fire logo used commonly to identify Pentecostal churches.57 Engels stressed that Rafael Cruz is today identified not as an Evangelical, but as a pastor with Purifying Fire International Ministry, although in January 2014, as Ted Cruz was preparing his presidential campaign, Rafael Cruz scrapped the group’s website, www.purifyingfire.org, after various blogs began identifying the ministry as rooted in “a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism.”

Dominionism calls on anointed Christian leaders to take over government to make the laws of the nation in accordance with Biblical laws. Engels documented that Rafael Cruz, at the Pastor Larry Huch’s New Beginnings mega-church in Bedford Texas, outside Dallas, on August 26, 2012, in a Dominionist sermon proclaimed his son, Ted Cruz, to be the “anointed one,” a Dominionist Messiah who would bring God’s law to reign, embedding into the article a YouTube video of the event. Engels ended the article by arguing that by identifying Ted Cruz as the anointed one,’ Rafael Cruz designated his son as what he believes is God’s choice to lead an evangelical coup d’état, such that, “Cruz’s campaign may be less about the White House and more about the white horses that will usher in the God’s Kingdom in the New Testament book of Revelation, Chapter 19.”

Given that Cruz had predicated much of his presidential campaign on the argument that he was the only GOP candidate who professed to be an Evangelical Christian, Engels’ widely read piece published on the eve of the Florida primary may have been enough to cause Cruz to finish third, at 17 percent, behind Rubio, at 27 percent, in a contest that Trump won with 46 percent of the vote—more than the votes of Rubio and Cruz combined.

On March 23, 2016, the National Enquirer published a story claiming private investigators were digging into at least five alleged extra-marital affairs involving Ted Cruz.58 The sensational story could not be immediately dismissed, if only because the National Enquirer broke the story in 2007 that former Sen. John Edwards, the vice-presidential running mate of then Sen. John Kerry in 2004, had covered up a scandal involving a love child born to him and Rielle Hunter, a filmmaker who he hired to work for his presidential campaign.59 “It’s Over For Pervy Ted” and “Cruz’s 5 Secret Mistresses!” screamed from the front page of the Enquirer in every super market and liquor store nationwide. I would have thought these kind of accusations gave Cruz some sort of manliness which otherwise is sorely lacking.

Two days later, on March 25, Ted Cruz denounced the story in a press conference in Wisconsin, during which he declared, “This garbage has no place in politics.” Cruz charged that operatives working for Trump fed the story to the National Enquirer, a tabloid that had endorsed Trump. “You know, Donald is fond of giving people nicknames, with this pattern he should not be surprised to see people calling him ‘Sleazy Donald’ because that is his first and last redoubt, to turn to sleaze,” Cruz said.60 “This has no business in politics. Years from now, when my daughters Google this, they will read these lies, these attacks, that Donald and his henchmen and his buddies and the National Enquirer spread about.” But the damage was done, as #CruzSexScandal began trending on Twitter.

The Cruz sex scandal broke amid a raging Internet exchange triggered when the Cruz-supporting super PAC, Make America Awesome, used a nude photograph of Trump’s wife Melania, that first appeared in an issue of GQ published in January 2000, some 16 years previously, in a 2016 campaign advertisement themed, “Meet Melania Trump. Your next First Lady. Or, you could support Ted Cruz on Thursday.” Trump retaliated as soon as the super PAC advertisement appeared, posting on Twitter a side-by-side headshot showing Cruz’s wife Heidi scowling, compared to Melania looking beautiful. In posting the comparison photos, Trump tweeted, “The images are worth a thousand words.”61

Predictably, Cruz shot back, denouncing Trump. ”It’s not easy to tick me off. I don’t get angry often. But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that’ll do it every time,” Cruz said in Wisconsin. ”Donald, you’re a sniveling coward. Leave Heidi the hell alone.” Cruz suggested Trump had started it with a tweet during the Arizona and Utah primary voting in which Trump threatened “to spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife—a suggestion Cruz took as confirmation that Trump operatives had concocted the story alleging Cruz was involved in extra-marital affairs.62 Cruz went so far as to speculate Trump went personal, attacking his wife, because “Trump had a very bad night last night in Utah,” where Cruz took 70 percent of the vote, allowing him to claim 40 delegates, while Cruz won Arizona’s primary, taking all of the state’s 58 votes in the winner-take-all contest.63

Trump countered in a statement saying, “I did not know about it, and have not, as yet, read it. Likewise, I have nothing to do with the National Enquirer and unlike Lyin’ Ted Cruz I do not surround myself with political hacks and henchmen and then pretend total innocence.” Trump continued: “Ted Cruz’s problem with the National Enquirer is his and his alone, and while they were right about O.J. Simpson, John Edwards and others, I certainly hope they are not right about Lyin’ Ted Cruz.”64

Then Cruz blamed the story on me, Roger Stone. “It is a story that quoted one source on the record: Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s chief political adviser,” said Cruz.

“It is attacking my family. And what is striking is Donald’s henchman, Roger Stone, had for months been foreshadowing that this attack was coming. It’s not surprising that Donald’s tweet occurs the day before the attack comes out. And I would note that Mr. Stone is a man who has 50 years of dirty tricks behind him. He’s a man for whom a term was coined for copulating with a rodent. Well, let me be clear: Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him.”

I denied any responsibility in posting or starting the story. In fact, Frank Morano on “AM70 The Answer” interviewed me on March 28, 2016, and this is an excerpt from that interview.

FRANK MORANO: We have Roger Stone, noted New York Times bestselling author, longtime Republican political consultant and former adviser to Donald Trump, and the only person, who you heard Ted Cruz in the clip I just played you, the only person quoted on the record in this incredible National Enquirer article… I don’t know where to begin, clearly the Cruz campaign has blamed you for everything except for kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, why? Everybody is acknowledging, even the NYT today, that this attempt to dig up these Cruz extramarital affairs was originally carried out by the Rubio campaign, why are they making you the guy everyone is deciding to blame?

ROGER STONE: I guess it is an attempt at deflection. You’ve been in politics a long time, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. So I guess, I have a brand, perhaps a brand for rough and tumble politics, a brand for the dramatic, but in this particular case, the private detectives who are specifically cited in the article… were actually working for and paid by Marco Rubio. I believe the Rubio campaign elected not to use this information, but they kept it as a hedge against some of the allegations about Rubio’s personal life, and in the end they elected not to use it. And before you knew it he was out of the race.

I think these private detectives got paid twice. They got paid once when they did the original work for Marco Rubio, and they got paid again when they on their own went ahead and sold it to the National Enquirer. They will admit that they pay for information they can confirm. But in this case, I can tell you categorically, I did not plant the story in the National Enquirer, and then blaming Donald Trump or his campaign is somewhat outrageous. I never discussed this with Donald or anyone in his campaign.

All I did do, when a longtime reporter from the National Enquirer, who I used to know when she was at the New York Post, and before that at the UK Daily Mail, called and asked for a comment, and I was happy to give a comment on the record: ”If this is proven, it would be highly problematic for Ted’s image, since it is built around his moral superiority, and his appeal to evangelical Christians…

MORANO: Why should we care about who Ted Cruz sleeps with?

STONE: Neither you or I are running for president…And he is, and he holds himself out as a moral exemplar, and I think it is the hypocrisy that once again is problematic here. And you have to wonder whether these women, one of whom worked for the Carly Fiorina campaign and then shortly thereafter Ted Cruz pays Carly half a million dollars. Ted despises Carly, and Carly despises Ted. What is the $500,000 for? Can you say hush money? He [Ted Cruz] specifically called me a henchman. Henchmen get paid. I’m not paid anything by the Trump campaign, so therefore by definition I can’t be a henchman … I think he’s the one who has been copulating with rodents …

“Ratfucking” was a term coined to describe me and other political allies of Richard Nixon who spread rumors and foiled the campaign events of rivals.

That CNN, let Ted Cruz attack me falsely by name at least three times during prime-time hours without ever affording me the opportunity to respond on air not only violates journalistic ethics, but it also reveals that CNN isn’t a news organization so much as they are antagonists to anything Trump.

On April 7, 2016 blogger Wayne Madsen, a former US military intelligence officer, posted a report he had written titled, “Was the father of presidential hopeful Cruz involved in the JFK assassination?”65

Then, on April 20, 2016, the National Enquirer published a sensational cover story, “Ted Cruz Father Linked to JFK Assassination.” The tabloid published a photograph showing a previously identified man helping Lee Harvey Oswald, the man the Warren Commission identified as JFK’s assassin, distribute his “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” pamphlets outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans on August 16, 1963, just some three months before JFK was assassinated in Dallas.66 A firestorm erupted with most major news channels dismissing the idea as a foul attempt by Trump supporters to stir up sensational allegations that could not be proved or disproved. “This is another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage,” communications director Alice Stewart told the Miami Herald. She denied emphatically the man standing next to Oswald in the 1963 photo was Cruz’s father, Rafael. “It’s embarrassing that anyone would enable Trump to discuss this. It’s a garbage story and clearly Donald wants to talk about garbage. Ted Cruz will do what he’s been doing, talking about jobs, freedom, and security for the American people,” Stewart insisted.67

“Previous questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr., the father of GOP presidential hopeful Rafael Cruz, Jr. (Ted Cruz). Based on the presence of the elder Cruz, an anti-Castro activist, in Dallas and New Orleans before the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency’s anti-Castro operations,” Madsen wrote. “Furthermore, a Cuban hired by alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and who bears a striking resemblance to Cruz is seen in an iconic photograph of Oswald and a group of Cubans Oswald hired who were distributing ‘Hands off Cuba!’ pamphlets in New Orleans in the summer of 1963,” Madsen continued. The photo of Oswald and other Cubans he hired for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was taken outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans on August 16, 1963. Wayne Madsen Report has been informed by a source that the individual to Oswald’s left is none other than Rafael Cruz. The photograph at the trade mart was favorably compared to a 1954 photograph of Cruz attached to an official Cuban Ministry of Education document.”68

Madsen, a seasoned researcher considered an expert with the JFK assassination collection at the National Archives in College Park, quickly found corroborating evidence that Rafael Cruz was CIA-connected. “In 1957, Rafael Cruz, the son of an employee of the US intelligence-linked RCA Corporation, left Cuba for the United States,” Madsen noted. “Cruz claims he fought with Castro against the fascist government of Fulgencio Batista but soured on the revolution. However, Cruz left Cuba two years before the Castro revolution.” The lies in Rafael Cruz’s life story caught Madsen’s attention as an intelligence analyst trained to look for such discrepancies as the kind of lies “CIA legends” creating fictitious personal histories are famous for inventing. “Cruz arrived in Austin where he enrolled in the University of Texas,” Madsen continued. “This is a strange story since he claimed he left Cuba with only $100, which he said was sewn into his underwear. Cruz eventually gained US permanent residency and a degree in mathematics from the University of Texas. In 1959, Cruz married Julia Ann Garza and, after Cruz graduated from the University of Texas in 1961, the couple moved to New Orleans from Dallas after the birth of their second daughter on November 18, 1962.”

Madsen continued detailing the parts of Rafael Cruz’s background record that do not apparently fit together in a consistent or easily documented pattern. “While living in New Orleans with his wife and two young daughters, Cruz claimed residency at two addresses, one a low-rent apartment building off of Jackson Avenue,” Madsen noted. “Cruz worked for an oil company in New Orleans. He has been less than forthcoming about the details of his time in New Orleans and the time line that included his move from Dallas.” Madsen continued, observing that Cruz and his wife Julia divorced in New Orleans or Dallas, allegedly in 1962 or 1963, a detail that Madsen claimed “is also clouded in mystery.” Madsen continued the narrative as follows: “Cruz apparently registered for the draft in 1967 claiming the New Orleans’ Jackson Street address. Draft registration was a requirement for resident aliens like Cruz. Cruz apparently waited until the age of 28 to register for the draft, which, because he waited so long, was a criminal offense at the time.”

Also cloudy are the circumstances of Rafael Cruz’s second marriage, Madsen pointed out. “While liable for the draft and possible service in Vietnam, a country where fellow Cuban immigrant Otto Macias gladly volunteered to serve, Cruz took off for Calgary, Canada with his second wife, Eleanor Darragh,” he wrote. “Darragh, a native of Delaware who graduated from Rice University in Houston, worked for the same oil company in New Orleans that employed Cruz. Their son, Rafael ‘Ted’ Cruz, Jr., now a candidate for president of the United States, claims that his mother and father worked for the same company in New Orleans but there is actually no record of an Eleanor Darragh Wilson Cruz living in New Orleans at the time.”

Madsen noted that Rafael Cruz’s draft registration form listed Cruz’s employer on July 26, 1967 as the Geophysics & Computer Service, Inc. “This company is the French-based Compagnie Générale de Géophysique (CGG). The date July 26, 1967 is also significant for Cubans. Castro called his revolutionary popular front the ‘July 26 Movement,’” Madsen reported. “CGG is linked to the large Schlumberger oil conglomerate, which, along with Halliburton, is one of the two largest oilfield drilling companies in the world. Schlumberger had been active with the CIA and Zapata Offshore Company, which was owned by George H. W. Bush.” Madsen continued: “Moreover, Jean de Menil, the son-in-law of Schlumberger founder Conrad Schlumberger, was a key figure in Permindex, the New Orleans-based CIA front headed up by Clay Shaw that was a key target of Garrison’s investigation of the New Orleans connection to JFK’s assassination in Dallas.”

Madsen commented that 1967, when Rafael Cruz, Sr. departed New Orleans, allegedly with his second wife (and Ted Cruz’s mother) Eleanor Darragh Wilson, was the same year that Garrison’s official investigation of the New Orleans connection to Kennedy’s assassination commenced with an indictment of Shaw, the same man whose office was located inside the International Trade Mart where Oswald and Mr. X were involved with handing out Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets on August 16, 1963. “Ted Cruz’s mother Eleanor also reportedly worked for the Schlumberger affiliate,” Madsen pointed out. “When the Cruzes left for Calgary in 1967, they worked under the aegis of Rafael B. Cruz & Associates, Ltd., which was owned by Rafael B. Cruz, Sr.”

Madsen has found documents at the National Archives proving Jim Garrison in investigating the JFK assassination was seeking to find information on three individuals believed to be in Calgary, one of whom Madsen believes may have been Rafael Cruz. It is a well-known fact that Oswald was working for the CIA front group of ex FBI officer Guy Bannister. Bannister gave Oswald the instruction to hand out the leaflets. The action was one of many Oswald activities that on the surface created a picture of Oswald as a pro Castro, Soviet sympathizer. Oswald recruited two helpers that day and one of them looks very much like Rafael Cruz, who, as I indicated before, is Cuban.

What makes this story interesting is that it is very possible that Rafael Cruz was living in New Orleans in 1963, although he has gone on the record stating that he didn’t move to New Orleans until 1965. It is well known that Rafael Cruz was involved in political demonstrations in Cuba in support of Castro. It was after Castro started leaning towards communism that Cruz changed sides and eventually left Cuba for the United States. What is likely, however, is that Rafael Cruz—whatever is the truth about how he left Cuba—was almost certainly interviewed by US government officials, very possibly involving the CIA, when he arrived in the United States. While the lies Rafael and Ted Cruz have told about how and why the father left Cuba fuel speculation a cover-story has been created to mask certain facts the Cruz family may still today find inconvenient to reveal.

The photos have been a curiosity since the House Special Committee on Assassinations examined them, way back in the 1970’s. The identity of the Cruz look alike has never been established. In May, I went on record saying that I had spoken with a source who identified the mystery man as Rafael Cruz. I was asked many times if I started the rumor or planted the story. I did not. Having a reputation as a “dirty trickster” has placed me in the firing line as a suspect. Whenever a salacious story breaks, especially those that cast a negative image of politicians I don’t support, I’m held to blame.

On April 26, Trump won all five states—Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—in what has become known as the “Acela Primary” in reference to the Amtrak Acela Express that runs through these states. This gave Trump another 111 delegates, with Cruz winning 2 delegates, and Kasich 5 delegates. Following the Acela Primary, national attention turned to Indiana, where Trump needed to win the 57 delegates in the winner-take-all primary scheduled for May 3, if he were to have a chance of getting 1,237 delegates. On April 26, the Washington Post reported Cruz “threw a Hail Mary pass” by announcing at a campaign event in Indianapolis that Carly Fiorina would be his vice presidential pick in the event he becomes the GOP nominee.69 Fiorina had endorsed Cruz on March 9, after she dropped out of the race. Since that time, Fiorina worked as an active Cruz surrogate, giving speeches and campaigning for him. The newspaper argued that Cruz’s decision to pick Fiorina was more than a decision to play “the woman card.” Since her exchange with Trump during the CNN-sponsored debate in September 2015, Fiorina was regarded as “an attack dog who has proven to be relatively effective in battling Trump.”

The Cruz team had made it clear to reporters that Indiana was going to be the end of Donald Trump. They put everything they had left in Indiana, probably just as certain that a loss there would put the nomination out of reach for the Texas Senator. On April 29th, just days before primary polls were to open, the Trump campaign realized Cruz was pressuring Hoosier Governor Mike Pence to endorse his candidacy. It was a tense day in Trump Tower; both Manafort and his chief of staff Rick Gates were in the Tower, monitoring the situation by phone.

With Manafort on a call in the stark room they shared, Gates walked over to Michael Caputo’s office—he had joined the headquarters at Manafort’s invitation after the New York victory—and talked nervously about the likelihood of a Pence-Cruz alliance. It had just been reported that Pence wouldn’t endorse after all—a result of a Manafort emissary’s visit. His message: Trump was going to win, and Pence was at the top of the list of potential running mates.

But in a moment, CNN announced from the flat screen on the 5th floor wall that the governor would back Cruz after all in an imminent radio interview. Gates raced over to tell Manafort and they dialed Indiana to get a readout. They heard from a Pence confidant who had been working for the governor that it couldn’t be stopped. Pence was going to endorse Cruz, but the announcement was not expected to be a strong endorsement.

“I’m not against anybody, but I will be voting for Ted Cruz in the Republican primary,” Pence said on a local television interview on April 29, 2016, endorsing Cruz as expected. Pence praised Cruz’s “knowledge of the Constitution” and his willingness to “take on the leadership” of his own party. But Pence also had kind words for Trump, commending Trump for highlighting the Indianapolis air conditioning manufacturer Carrier’s decision to close its plant there and move 2,100 jobs to Mexico. Pence stressed that Trump has “given voice to the frustrations of millions of working Americans with the lack of progress in Washington, D.C.” Pence encouraged Hoosier voters “to make up their own minds,” stressing that his loyalty was to the Republican Party. “Let me be very clear on this race,” Pence said carefully. “Whoever wins the Republican nation for president of the United States, I’m going to work my heart out to get elected this fall.”70

On May 3, the day of the Indiana primary, Trump returned to the JFK theme, phoning in to Fox News “Fox and Friends” morning show. The hosts played a video clip showing Ted Cruz confronting on an Indiana street a Trump supporter holding a “Make America Great Again” poster. “Donald Trump is deceiving you,” Cruz pleaded. “He is playing you for a chump.” Unconvinced, the Trump supporter replied, “You’ll find out tomorrow,” referring to the primary voting scheduled for the next day in Indiana. “Indiana doesn’t want you,” the unidentified Trump supporter insisted. “You are the problem, politician. America is a better country without you.” When asked what he thought of the video clip, Trump responded immediately. “They know Cruz is lying,” Trump said. “That’s why we call him ‘Lying Ted.’ These are smart people. Middle income people haven’t had a pay raise for 18 years.”

Next, Fox and Friends commented that Cruz was making a last-ditch effort to beat Trump in Indiana. “Fox and Friends” played for Trump a clip of Rafael Cruz in Indiana saying, “I implore, I exhort every member of the body of Christ to vote according to the word of God. Vote for the candidate that stands on the word of God and the Constitution of the United States of America. And I am convinced it’s my son, Ted Cruz. The alternative could be the destruction of America.” Trump retorted that it was “a disgrace” that Ted Cruz’s father would go out in Indiana and make such statements, arguing that many prominent Evangelicals had endorsed him. This caused Trump to transition into the JFK story. ““His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being, you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous, right prior to JFK being shot,” Trump said. “Nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it. I mean, what was he doing—what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.”71

On May 3rd, campaign staffers and supporters watched in the Trump Tower lobby again as the hard fought Indiana primary results came in. Trump took an insurmountable lead in early returns and it quickly became clear he would beat Cruz badly. Trump staffers, the candidate, his family, and friends—and most of the cynical media present—were surprised about what happened next: with no path to the nomination in front of him, Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race.

Trump was magnanimous in victory, even though Cruz had unloaded every insult in the book on him the day before. “Ted Cruz, I don’t know if he likes me, or if he doesn’t like me, but he is one hell of a competitor,” he said. “He is a tough, smart guy. And he has got an amazing future.” Talking heads remarked in unison that the victory speech was uncharacteristically focused and polite, that the brash candidate actually looked the part he needed to play.

Trump won the Indiana primary decisively, gaining 53.3 percent of the vote and all 57 delegates, with Cruz in second place at 36.6 percent, and Kasich a distant third with 7.6 percent.

That evening Cruz, the only candidate to score multiple state victories against Trump in the primaries and state caucuses, suspended his campaign. “From the beginning I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory. Tonight, I’m sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed,” Cruz said in his concession speech delivered Tuesday night to supporters gathered in Indianapolis. “The voters chose another path, and so with a heavy heart, but with boundless optimism for the long-term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign.”72 The New York Times, reporting Cruz’s decision, noted that less than a month earlier, Cruz seemed to be on the way to victory. “He had won Wisconsin,” reporter Matt Flegenheimer wrote in the New York Times article. “He was dominating delegate elections, positioning himself for what seemed increasingly likely to be a floor fight at the Republican convention in July, as the campaign of Donald J. Trump fell into internal disarray.”73

With Trump steamrolling his way to the Republican nomination and Manafort tightening the campaign up more every day, things were looking up. And every day that went by, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski lost footing. Still, he managed to throw roadblocks up in front of Manafort every day.

Lewandowski’s strategy: find all Manafort’s mistakes and amplify them to the candidate. When there weren’t mistakes to find, he created problems. And whenever Manafort moved to solve a problem, Lewandowki worked his angles to make sure his solution failed—even when it hurt Donald Trump.

Lewandowski’s team included communications director Hope Hicks and Trump’s Deputy Assistant and Head of Advance, George Gigicos. Between the three of them, they controlled access to Trump when the candidate traveled. And with the energetic rally schedule Trump kept, he was on the road more than he was off. Manafort may have been in charge, but when the Trump Air’s wheels were up, the entire campaign dynamic changed. Corey was the boss.

With the results in from Indiana, RNC Reince Priebus on the evening of May 3, declared on Twitter, just moments after Cruz’s speech pulling out of the race, that Donald J. Trump “will be the presumptive GOP nominee,” adding, “we all need to unite and focus on defeating @HillaryClinton #NeverClinton.”74 The next day, Kasich suspended his presidential campaign, with remarks made in Columbus, Ohio, that lasted about 15 minutes. “I have always said that the Lord has a purpose for me, as he has for everyone,” Mr. Kasich said. “And as I suspend my campaign today, I have renewed faith, deeper faith, that the Lord will show me the way forward and fulfill the purpose of my life.”75 In withdrawing from the presidential race, neither Cruz nor Kasich took the additional step of endorsing Trump.

With Trump as the presumptive nominee, he easily won the remaining primaries: Nebraska, West Virginia, Oregon, and Washington, all held May 10-24; as well as California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota, held on June 7. In the end, Trump secured the GOP presidential nomination with 1,725 delegates, 488 more than the 1,237 required for victory on the first ballot.

None of this would have happened had Lewandowski been left in place. As May 3, 2016 came to a close, Trump realized he owed locking up the GOP presidential nomination on the first ballot to Manafort’s expert intervention as a seasoned professional in the mechanics of winning elections, supplemented by veteran crisis management skills only a true adult is capable of exercising.

Nearly a year had passed, but Trump—the most unlikely presidential candidate to succeed and the only one to have never held elective office—was the last candidate in what had been a crowded field of GOP contenders.

Altogether, the GOP candidates during the Republican primaries participated in a total of 12 debates that began on August 6, 2016, at the Quicken Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, and ended, somewhat prematurely, at the University of Miami in Miami, Florida, in a debate hosted by CNN on March 10, 2016. Only one debate was cancelled. What was originally scheduled to be the last debate, the one originally scheduled for Monday, March 21, 2016, in Salt Lake City, Utah, was cancelled after Trump and Kasich said they would not attend.

This marathon sequence of 12 debates was punctuated by a narrowing of the field, as candidates dropped out one-by-one, as primaries, caucus meetings, and state conventions wound their way through all 50 states, beginning with the Iowa primary on February 1, 2016, and ending with two of the most populous states—California and New Jersey—and three relatively sparsely populated western states—Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota—on June 7, 2016.

Rick Perry was the first to drop out on September 11, 2015, followed by Scott Walker on September 21, 2015. By the end of December 2015, before the primaries had even begun, Bobby Jindal, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki dropped out, leaving twelve GOP candidates remaining in the field.

As 2016 proceeded, the failure to win the primaries and the resultant loss of financial backers was the main reason GOP contenders dropped out. In February 2016, seven more dropped out, including Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Jim Gilmore, and Jeb Bush.

When Jeb gave his concession speech in Columbia, South Carolina, on February 20, 2016, the GOP race for the White House reached a watershed moment. Standing before a hotel ballroom full of staffers, donors, supporters, and longtime friends, Bush said proudly, “In this campaign, I have stood my ground, refusing to bend to the political winds.” Exiting as the high-profile establishment candidate, Bush’s concession speech made clear he had fallen victim to his own miscalculation.

As the Washington Post noted, Bush, who had never worked in Washington or held a federal job, was positioned as the favorite of the GOP elite because of his family lineage and his close ties to many of the GOP’s most generous donors and senior leaders.76 The newspaper further pointed out that by the time Bush conceded, his super PAC, Right to Rise USA, had raised $118 million and had spent $95.7 million through February 2016, mostly on advertising to attack other GOP candidates.

The Washington Post also pointed out that Jeb had never managed to shake his family lineage, despite his insisting several times that a presidential campaign “can’t be about the past; it can’t be about my mom and dad, or my brother, who I love. It has to be about the ideas I believe in to move our country forward.” Yet, Bush had failed to transform the campaign into a referendum about his record as Florida governor. Instead, he got bogged down debating whether he would have authorized military action against Saddam Hussein, as his brother did after the 9/11 terrorists attacks. Repeatedly pressed, Jeb finally acknowledged that “knowing what we now know,” he would not have authorized the war in Iraq.

By the 12th GOP primary debate on March 10, 2016, the field was down to five candidates: Donald Trump versus Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich. Of these five, Ben Carson was the only remaining candidate who failed to win a single primary.

While Trump came off as aggressively combative, Carson created the impression of a humble, but talented surgeon, more interested in serving the good of the Republic than in creating a political career for himself. As the field of Republican challengers began to stabilize, Trump and Carson were positioned as the outsiders in an election in which GOP voters were open in expressing their disdain for GOP establishment candidates as typified by Jeb Bush.

While both Rubio and Cruz were Washington insiders, given their positions as US senators, each believed he had distinct advantages in competing against Trump. Marco Rubio continued to believe his Cuban heritage gave him the best chance to command the Hispanic voters that would be needed if the GOP presidential candidate were to have a chance to beat Hillary. Cruz, who shared Rubio’s Cuban heritage, also felt he had a distinct advantage appealing to Republican Evangelical conservatives, given the strong faith he and his pastor father professed. Finally, Carson dropped out on March 2, 2016, followed by Rubio, who had won primaries only in the District of Columbia, Minnesota, and Puerto Rico. Rubio dropped out on March 15, 2016, a few days after Ben Carson.

As the primaries came to an end, only two contenders—John Kasich, who won only the Ohio primary, and Ted Cruz, who had won 11 primaries—were the only candidates left in the race to continue battling against Donald Trump. In the end, Trump’s victory was decisive, winning 41 primaries and getting nearly 500 more delegates than the 1,237 he needed to win on the first ballot. Kasich was the last to drop out, believing to the end that the GOP leadership would gravitate to him, a moderate Republican who polled well against Clinton, to bring the party together in what he had envisioned as a vote-swapping contested convention that he predicted would follow the GOP’s wild and rancorous primary battle.

There had never been anything like it in US political history. A colorful and outspoken New York City billionaire characterized as a “clown” when he started out had managed to beat a series of competitors distinguished at the end not by their professional political careers, but by the moniker nicknames Trump had conferred upon them. As the GOP headed to Cleveland in July, ”Low Energy Jeb,” “Little Marco,” and “Lying Ted” were bystanders, while against all odds, Donald J. Trump prepared to take on “Crooked Hillary” in the biggest battle of all.