Ted Cruz Begs for Money as Stunning Poll Shows Democrat Closing In

Senator Ted Cruz is getting worried in his reelection campaign against Democratic challenger Representative Colin Allred in Texas.

Cruz told Newsmax on Tuesday morning that Chuck Schumer said, “I’m his number one target in the country, and the Democrats are spending over $100 million.”

“Chuck Schumer and George Soros are flooding cash into the state of Texas. There have been multiple polls in the last three weeks that show it as a four-point race, a three-point race, a two-point race, and there have been two polls that show it as a one-point race,” Cruz said.

Cruz warned that Allred was “an extreme left-wing Democrat,” throwing out the usual accusations that the congressman supports open borders, defunding the police, and higher taxes, and that he is targeting Cruz with “relentless attack ads.”

“I want to encourage your viewers this morning: I need your help,” Cruz said, directing people to his campaign website to “contribute, because we are getting swamped by Chuck Schumer and George Soros.”

It’s telling how desperate Cruz is getting if he’s using a TV appearance to plead for campaign contributions in a solid Republican state like Texas. He isn’t exaggerating about the polls, one of which shows Allred behind Cruz by only a single percentage point in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office in 30 years.

Cruz was struggling to raise money early in the race in April, and at the time, he also invoked Soros in a similar plea for donations on Fox News. But his last entreaty didn’t seem to help him, and his attacks on Allred are falling flat in the face of the congressman’s moderate reputation.

One might think Cruz would try a more moderate approach to combat Allred, but instead, he’s continued to push a right-wing message. He’s helped to spread a debunked racist attack on Haitian immigrants, refuses to say whether he’d accept a Democratic presidential victory in November, and continues to fawn over Donald Trump, who has insulted him numerous times. Is any of that going to help him defeat Allred, or will he have to flee to Cancún?

Suddenly, Donald Trump cares about witness safety and privacy in his court cases, but only when it comes to his January 6 case.

On Tuesday, Trump’s legal team filed a motion demanding Judge Tanya Chutkan redact even more of Jack Smith’s dossier against him in the federal election interference case. As Smith has compiled and submitted new evidence of the former president’s work to overthrow the 2020 election, Trump’s lawyers have asked the special counsel for redactions of “identity-related information” and “sensitive witness statements” before it is released to the public.

In their court filing, Trump’s lawyers accuse Smith’s office of politicizing the trial with disregard to witness safety and anonymity. “The Office believes President Trump’s Constitutional rights to impartial jurors and fair proceedings—to say nothing of witness privacy and even safety—all take a back seat to the Office’s political goals.”

This motion comes after Smith submitted a new, still-sealed brief on Trump’s actions in 2020, following the Supreme Court’s controversial presidential immunity ruling. The brief, with previously unseen evidence, is designed to convince Chutkan, and any higher courts, that the former president should still face justice for attempting to overturn the election.

Smith asked Chutkan to allow the public to see a redacted version of the brief. To be clear, Smith is not asking for the witnesses be named outright but rather is asking that the public be able to see the broad strokes of his brief. As expected, Trump’s team is yelling election interference.

“The Office wants their politically motivated manifesto to be public, contrary to the Justice Manual and longstanding DOJ norms in cases not involving President Trump, in the final weeks of the 2024 Presidential election while early voting has already begun throughout the United States,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their filing.

Interestingly, Trump didn’t seem to care about safety when he unleashed his followers on witnesses and courtroom staff in his New York fraud case. Earlier this year, he also asked Judge Aileen M. Cannon if he could out some of the witnesses in his classified documents case. The threat of being identified caused one witness to preemptively come forward for their own safety.

It’s fair to say from Trump’s response, his team does not want these statements and evidence to see the light of day.

Iran launched a missile attack on Israel Tuesday, plunging the war-torn region into another layer of conflict. But one American politician was quick to make the violence about himself.

Moments after the strike, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to soak up any social credit available from the Middle Eastern provocation.

“Look at the World today—Look at the missiles flying right now in the Middle East, look at what’s happening with Russia/Ukraine, look at Inflation destroying the World,” Trump wrote in one post. “NONE OF THIS HAPPENED WHILE I WAS PRESIDENT!”

In another post, Trump decried the conflict as “TOTALLY PREVENTABLE.”

“IT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED,” Trump said. “IF I WERE PRESIDENT, IT WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED!”

While it’s impossible to say exactly how a Trump presidency would have handled the rolling, devastating fallout from the October 7 attack in Israel, Trump has not exactly been on the side of peace. Instead, he has claimed that Israel will face “total annihilation” if he isn’t elected in November, has openly questioned the faith of Jewish Americans if they don’t support him over Vice President Kamala Harris, and has encouraged the Jewish state to “finish what they started.”

Meanwhile, some members of Trump’s inner circle, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, have been extremely vocal about the multipronged conflict, urging Israel to continue escalating violence against its neighbors.

“Anyone who has been calling for a ceasefire in the north is wrong. There is no going back for Israel. They cannot afford now to not finish the job and completely dismantle the arsenal that has been aimed at them. They will never get another chance,” Kushner posted on X Saturday.

The Republican presidential nominee also caught flak from some of his supporters last month when he hosted Qatari leaders at his Palm Beach resort, with some potential MAGA voters decrying the Middle Eastern leaders as antisemitic for their country’s role in moderating cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

To date, the Health Ministry in Gaza has recorded more than 41,500 deaths from the cataclysmic conflict in which Israel has weaponized mass starvation as well as blocked or destroyed access to critical resources such as water, food, fuel, electricity, and medical aid.

J.D. Vance keeps claiming that he hasn’t done much—if anything—to prepare for Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate. 

During an interview on CNBC Tuesday, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who has been standing in for Minnesota Governor Tim Walz during Vance’s practice sessions, was asked whether fact-checking Walz was part of Vance’s strategy.

“I think J.D. Vance is going to concentrate on the issues that Americans care about the most,” Emmer replied. 

“Rather than getting into some high school debate, I think he’s going to be talking to the American people about what Donald Trump did in his first term with the economy, and the border, and safety and security around the world, what Harris and Biden have broken in the last four years, and how he and Trump are going to fix it,” Emmer said.

Here, Emmer perfectly demonstrated what is likely to be Vance’s strategy: to completely ignore the questions and instead deliver a dry stump speech. 

Emmer also had trouble responding to questions about Vance polling historically low for a vice presidential candidate.

In what seems like an attempt to appear cool under pressure, the Ohio senator—who breathlessly repeated debunked claims of Haitian immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets—has separately said that his platform is so bulletproof he doesn’t even need to practice arguing it. 

“We have well developed views on public policy so we don’t have to prepare that much,” Vance said during a Teamsters press call Wednesday morning, according to Politico. “We feel a lot more confident, and frankly, you don’t have to prepare if you don’t have to hide what you say.”

During a rally in North Carolina on Monday, Vance said that he was taking a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook by … not really doing anything at all. 

“What me and Donald Trump are going to keep on doing is going everywhere and talking to everybody,” Vance said. “We talk to the hostile media, we talk to the friendly media, we talk to the national media, we talk to the local media, and we do it because we think the American people deserve leaders who try to earn their vote instead of expecting it to be given to them.”

Trump had made a similar comment ahead of his first presidential debate against Joe Biden.  “People say, ‘How are you preparing?’ I’m preparing by taking questions from you and others, if you think about it,” said Trump, while speaking to a conservative radio talk show host so friendly that he changed his profile picture to an image of himself and the former president after they spoke. 

J.D. Vance’s unpopularity has left Republicans scrambling to defend their vice presidential nominee ahead of Tuesday night’s debate with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Representative Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, has been helping Vance by standing in for Walz during debate preparation. But Emmer had trouble responding to questions on CNBC about Vance polling historically low for a vice presidential candidate.

On Squawk Box Tuesday, Becky Quick mentioned Vance having “some of the worst polling numbers,” and asked Emmer if Vance taking a “prosecutorial” or “lawyerly” approach would help the Ohio senator during the debate.

“I think the polling that you’re talking about is because people have not been introduced to Tim Walz,” Emmer said, before Quick corrected him and noted she was talking about Vance’s numbers.

“But hear me out. Nobody had Tim Walz on their bingo card, and he shows up. All of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh look at this guy, he’s got all kinds of energy, whatever.’ Nobody’s talking about issues. Again, as people get to know Tim Walz, they do not like him,” Emmer said, noting that the debate is Vance’s chance to introduce himself to the American people.

It’s pretty clear that Emmer had to deflect the question because he had no good response to why Vance is polling lower than any other vice presidential candidate of the twenty-first century, even lower than Sarah Palin. As of Tuesday afternoon, 40 percent of Americans view Walz favorably compared to 34.8 percent for Vance, according to 538.

Vance has hurt his own standing thanks to his comments about childless adults, and women in particular, saying that they should not hold positions of power and calling leaders of the Democratic Party “childless cat ladies.” He has made disturbing comments disparaging immigrants and egged on a debunked racist conspiracy that Haitian immigrants are capturing and eating pets even after knowing he had no proof.

Meanwhile, Walz has been receiving positive attention even before Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate. His background as a military veteran and high school football coach, as well as his down-to-earth manner, have endeared him to the Democratic base. And unlike Vance, Walz knows how to order donuts like a normal person. At Tuesday night’s debate, Vance will have a tall order to make himself appear more likable and less weird.