HOUSTON — Ted Cruz was the candidate, but Donald Trump was the star.

At a packed Monday-evening rally here for Cruz’s Senate reelection campaign, Trump stayed in the limelight and continued to brandish immigration as a rallying cry in his endorsements for the midterm elections.

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“This will be the election of the caravan, Kavanaugh, law and order, tax cuts and common sense,” the president said, referring to strategic themes that have come into focus in recent weeks, including the Supreme Court confirmation battle for Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Cruz took the stage before the president and attacked his opponent, Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who has captured the national attention as a watershed candidate in a position to break Texas’ 24-year drought for electing a Democrat to statewide office. But it was mostly pro-Trump at the Houston rally, as Trump campaign signs far outnumbered Cruz paraphernalia, and as the president walked onstage to take up his favorite talking points.

Trump did begin by emphasizing his support for Cruz, in contrast to the sharp insults he lobbed at the senator when they were both vying for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Trump at the time referred to Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted” and insinuated that the senator’s father was involved in the John F. Kennedy assassination. Trump also posted a meme mocking Cruz’s wife, Heidi, for her appearance.

But while leaving the White House on Monday afternoon for Houston, the president dismissed the insults as the banter of a “nasty” and “tough” race, even calling Cruz “Beautiful Ted.” At the rally, Trump said he and Cruz had a “love fest” before fighting for the party’s blessing.

The president heartily supported Cruz’s Senate bid at the start of the rally, but mentioned the senator only occasionally throughout his speech as he praised his own administration’s accomplishments and priorities.

Echoing his Twitter account for the past few weeks, Trump continued to use immigration as a rallying cry to vote for Republicans and secure the border. Over the past week, the president has targeted a large group of migrants originally from Honduras who are trekking toward the U.S., threatening on Twitter to withdraw international aid for Honduras if it did not stop its citizens from crossing north.

At Monday’s rally, Trump called the caravan an “assault on our country.” He also continued to support an unfounded theory that Democrats paid migrants to storm the U.S., something he raised on Twitter last week.

“Do you know how the caravan started? Does everybody know?” the president said Monday. “I think the Democrats had something to do with it. And now they are saying, I think we made a big mistake. People are seeing how bad it is, how pathetic it is, how bad our laws are.”

Trump also used the caravan as a rallying cry for a key campaign promise of building a wall along the Mexican border — a promise that exists more in the wishes of rally chants than reality, given the meager funding so far.

Hitting all of his immigration talking points, Trump also argued for voter ID laws and railed against Democrats for allegedly allowing undocumented immigrants to vote. Pushing another unfounded theory that large numbers of such residents vote in U.S. elections, Trump again targeted immigrants in his plea for Republican support, linking his theory of illegal voting to Democratic machinations.

“They want to demand to vote,” Trump said. “By the way, I hate to tell you, you go to California, they vote anyway. They are not supposed to. And every time I say it, the fake news says, ‘Oh!’ They have so many people voting illegally in this country. It’s a disgrace.”

“Republicans believe we should protect public benefits for truly needy Americans, not for illegal aliens,” he continued. “As we speak, the Democrat Party is openly encouraging millions of illegal aliens to break our laws, violate our borders and overwhelm our nation. The Democrats have launched an assault on the sovereignty of our country.”

National sovereignty has long been a focus for Trump, but at Monday’s rally, he took it further by proudly declaring himself a “nationalist” in a rebuke to Democratic “globalists” who he claims want to put the interests of other nations above those of the United States.

Trump critics have long described the president as a nationalist in order to disparage him as jingoistic and parochial. But his embrace of the word also reflects his rejection of political correctness, by using a term that he admits has fallen out of favor with the mainstream.

“You know, they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned. It’s called a nationalist,” Trump said.

“And I say, ‘Really? We’re not supposed to use that word,’” he continued. “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist.”

Outside the recurrent theme of immigration, Trump continued to praise his administration’s tax policies, saying they saved small businesses and farms. He touted plans he has discussed to cut taxes by 10 percent for middle-income earners, though no concrete plans to do so have actually been presented. Either way, the House is in recess until after the midterm elections, so no such plans could be implemented before then.

Trump also emphasized his efforts in lowering estate taxes, which were largely affected by the 2017 Republican tax bill greatly expanding estate tax exemptions.

The president’s focus on inheritance matters followed an expansive New York Times report earlier this month that, in part, accused Trump and his family of establishing byzantine schemes to avoid a 55 percent inheritance tax — a report the White House has resoundingly denied.

“Instead of having them go out and borrow a tremendous amount of money to pay the estate tax, they don’t have to borrow anything. There is no tax,” Trump said. “To me that’s a very important thing.”

Jared Kushner’s critics say that, when the going gets tough for the Trump administration, Kushner goes quiet.

But on Monday, amid the ongoing uproar over a Saudi Arabian journalist’s murder, Kushner unexpectedly stepped into the spotlight instead of avoiding it.

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President Donald Trump’s son in law made a rare televised appearance on Monday at a CNN forum, where he fielded questions about the U.S.-Saudi relationship in the wake of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s killing. It was a particularly sensitive subject given that Trump himself has expressed annoyance over media scrutiny of Kushner’s close relationship with the Saudi prince widely accused of ordering the murder.

The interview — planned before Khashoggi’s death erupted into an international scandal — was conducted by Van Jones, a liberal pundit-activist who Kushner has cultivated through his work on prison reform.

It was unclear whether Kushner might have preferred to skip the event — or, as one Republican close to the White House suggested, whether he welcomed it as a safe space to break his silence on the alleged role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom Kushner has forged a close bond.

Kushner’s language was careful, and Jones did not press him hard on the explosive issue. “Right now, as an administration we’re more in the fact-finding phase,” Kushner said about the U.S. inquiry into Khashoggi’s death, which is still pending roughly 20 days after Khashoggi stepped into the Saudi consulate in Turkey and disappeared.

Even those tame words were unusual for Kushner, who has spoken on-camera just a handful of times since joining the Trump administration as a senior adviser.

At other times of great stress in the White House, Kushner has retreated into his niche policy portfolio of trade, prison reform, and Middle East peace talks — or has skipped town altogether. During a failed GOP attempt to repeal Obamacare last year, he and his wife Ivanka enjoyed a well-publicized — and much ridiculed — weeklong ski trip in Aspen, Colo. Amid last year’s uproar over a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., he and Ivanka escaped to bucolic Vermont. And shortly after the FBI raided the home and office of Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen earlier this year, the young couple decamped to Peru on official business.

“When things go south, people always wonder ‘Where is Jared?’” said one Republican close to the White House. “Jared does what he does.”

Kushner, who has visited Saudi Arabia several times during the Trump presidency, has stayed away from Riyadh since the Khashoggi scandal unfolded. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled there last week and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was in the Saudi capital on Monday.

For Kushner, the trick has become protecting his own image both inside the White House and before the public, while privately keeping the counsel of a key ally.

Unable to dodge the subject entirely, Kushner offered cautious words on Monday that underscored the White House’s struggle to condemn Khashoggi’s death without rupturing a strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia — one crucial to Kushner’s effort to develop a plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace, among other Trump priorities.

“The world is watching,” Kushner said on CNN when asked what advice he had given the crown prince. “This is a very, very serious accusation. A very serious situation.” He added that he had urged Salman to “be sure you’re transparent and to take this very seriously.”

Jones did not dwell on Kushner’s relationship with Salman, widely said to have been instrumental in shaping Trump’s positive view of an authoritarian Islamic monarchy which Trump had often denounced before his election. It was Kushner who pushed for Trump to make his first official trip overseas to Riyadh, where the president and Kushner himself were lavishly celebrated at a royal palace.

In a sign of uncertainty over how the Khashoggi saga will play out, White House officials have been reluctant to comment even privately until they have a better sense as to where the president will ultimately land on the matter. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to deliver a Tuesday address revealing more details about the Oct. 2 killing at a Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not respond to a request for comment.

In recent days, President Trump has been particularly annoyed by the narrative that Kushner, his son-in-law, and the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — both wealthy and self-confident heirs in their mid-30s — are close friends, said a second Republican close to the White House.

Trump seemed to downplay the relationship in a Friday interview with the Washington Post, saying, contrary to ample evidence: “They’re two young guys. Jared doesn’t know him well or anything.”

Trump does highly value the U.S.-Saudi relationship, not least as a means of containing Iran as the U.S. cranks up political and economic pressure on Sunni-led Saudi Arabia’s Shiite arch rival.

Trump does not believe responsibility for Khashoggi’s death should be laid at his feet, said the Republican – and the president is eager to put the spotlight on the U.S. and Saudi Arabia relationship behind him as he spotlights issues like immigration ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

Some Trump allies are doubtful that the issue can be swept aside, however.

“The reality is that I don’t think they can put behind them,” said White House ally and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “If they don’t adopt some type of strong sanctions, then Congress will focus on it and make more noise. It’s just as a matter of national policy.”

Gingrich was quick to put the blame on the Saudis for damaging that relationship by going off “doing something stupid,” saying the administration wants to find a path out of this.

“They are not going to give up on that priority because the Saudis killed Mr. Khashoggi,” said a third Republican close to the White House.

President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of a landmark arms control treaty with Russia comes after nearly a year of appeals from top military leaders to confront China’s rising missile ambitions — perhaps the real target of the move.

Trump told reporters Monday outside the White House that Beijing’s growing arsenal played into his decision to withdraw from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, even though China is not a party to the pact. His justification “includes China, and it includes Russia, and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game,” Trump said.

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“You can’t do that. You can’t play that game on me,” he added.

Trump also restated the evidence that Moscow has been violating the treaty by deploying a banned weapon, a complaint his administration has voiced before.

But some U.S. military officials have asserted for months that if China is unwilling to sign on to the treaty American forces will be “hamstrung” by Beijing’s growing arsenal of ground-based missiles — 90 percent of which would be outlawed if it were a party to the treaty — and need the freedom to boost their own missile forces in the region.

“There’s a military imbalance in Asia that we’re worried about,” said Eric Sayers, who served as a special assistant to retired Navy Admiral Harry Harris, who was the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific before becoming U.S. ambassador to South Korea. “China’s pursued a missile-based strategy.”

The so-called 1987 INF Treaty banned land-based missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers in an effort to prevent highly destabilizing missiles that could be armed with nuclear warheads from being deployed along the borders of Europe.

It was negotiated by then-President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and ratified by the U.S. Senate and the Russian Duma.

Trump over the weekend cited as his main rationale for abandoning the American commitment Russia’s violation of the pact beginning in 2014.

“And I don’t know why President Obama didn’t negotiate or pull out,” Trump said at a campaign rally. “And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to. We’re the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we’ve honored the agreement.

“But Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So we’re going to terminate the agreement. We’re gonna pull out,” Trump added.

Publicly at least, both the Pentagon and State Department have until now maintained that finding ways to compel Russia to comply with the INF treaty was preferable than scrapping it altogether.

On Monday a Pentagon spokesman said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis “is completely completely aligned with the president, and he is in close contact with the president on this.”

Army Col. Rob Manning declined to answer whether Trump had conferred with Mattis before making the decision but noted “the secretary has publicly started that Russia has not been in compliance with the treaty.”

Mattis told reporters earlier this month that “the current situation with Russia in blatant violation of this treaty is untenable.”

Russia, which has long denied it is violating the treaty, fired back on Monday.

“Russia is and has been devoted to the clauses of the agreement, and we think the intention of the U.S. to withdraw is, of course, concerning because such steps, if taken, can make the world a more dangerous place,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Yet the decision also comes following a nearly yearlong push by top U.S. military officials in the Pacific to either find ways to bring China into the treaty or develop new American weapons to counter it.

“We’re hamstrung in a number of ways, one of which is some of our treaties are self-limiting in my opinion,” Harris testified before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year. “And we have no missiles that can meet [China’s] capability from the ground.”

Last year, Beijing also displayed a new medium-range ballistic missile during a military parade it boasted is capable of “precision strikes against ground targets and conventional strikes against naval targets” across the region, the Pentagon reported in its 2018 report to Congress on military developments in China.

Not all U.S. military officials have agreed, however, that the U.S. needs to counter Beijing’s buildup of land-based missiles with weapons of its own banned under the INF Treaty.

Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has asserted that describing the INF Treaty as hindering the U.S. military against China is “a bridge too far.”

While the INF Treaty bans intermediate-range ground-launched missiles, it doesn’t prohibit the U.S. from developing and deploying missiles with similar ranges that are fired from warships or submarines and aircraft, Selva has said.

Indeed, sea-launched and air-launched systems are likely far better suited for the Pacific region any way, Jim Miller, who previously served as under secretary of Defense for policy in the Obama administration, told reporters on Monday.

“For the Asia-Pacific theater, there’s a great advantage to both undersea where U.S. has dominance … and to airborne systems,” Miller said. “Particularly long-range stealthy systems that can deliver munitions and provide a more capable and credible counter to Chinese capabilities.”

There could also be another way to keep the INF treaty alive, according to John Holdren, a former science adviser to President Barack Obama who is now now a scholar at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affair.

Holdrem, who was involved in the original discussions that led to the INF Treaty in the mid-1980s, said in an interview that there has not been any formal effort that he knows of to try to engage the Chinese on the issue.

“The United States should try to address the fact that China is not a party by negotiating a new treaty with that country or with China and China,” he added in a statement.

Eric Edelman, who served as under secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush, said that Russia, too, has chafed at the Chinese missile buildup.

And in 2008, he recalled, a U.S. overture to expand the INF treaty to other countries drew little support from China, Iran, Pakistan or others that are building up their arsenals of intermediate-range missiles.

Trump appeared to say it is time to try again with China, telling reporters Monday: “They should be included.”

Wesley Morgan contributed to this report.

DES MOINES — Kamala Harris swears she’s “not bullshitting” when she says she’s squarely focused on the midterm elections.

But even before she arrived here Monday, there were signs of the California senator’s heightening preparation for a 2020 presidential run. In recent days, an adviser told POLITICO, Harris sent $25,000 to the Democratic parties in all four early nominating states: Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire.

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Then Harris crossed into this first-in-the-nation caucus state for the first time this year, stumping for Iowa Democrats and previewing the contours of her own likely campaign.

“We need to have a better vision for this country,” Harris told about 200 activists inside a community college auditorium in suburban Des Moines, railing against Republican economic policies that she said have hurt working Americans.

Framing an alternative — as she did in Wisconsin over the weekend — Harris touted a $6,000 tax break that she proposed last week for families earning up to $100,000 annually, a ready-made message for her effort to connect with Democrats in the Midwest.

“This is the moment in time that is requiring us to fight for the best of who we are,” Harris said Monday. “And the stakes are high. I don’t have to tell you what’s happening here in Iowa, where they’re privatizing Medicare, where we know that just in a very short period of time, people’s premiums are going to go up at least threefold.”

She said, “We are better than this.”

Harris’ arrival in Iowa came relatively late, months after lower-tier contenders began swarming into Iowa, and two weeks after Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), drew standing ovations at the state Democratic Party’s premier Fall Gala event. Locals noticed that Harris’ camp began making calls into the state about her plans to travel here just as anticipation for Booker’s speech was building.

Scott Brennan, Iowa Democratic National Committee member and a former state party chairman, said Monday that Harris “and a number of other [potential candidates] have kind of gotten a late start” fundraising for Iowa Democratic candidates.

But he said that of top-tier candidates, “Everybody started late this cycle … Those folks haven’t come in nearly as early as folks did, certainly, in the ‘08 cycle.”

Brennan said, “She’s got ground to make up, but she’s not very far behind yet.”

Harris’ Iowa itinerary has taken on significance for national Democrats as a measure of Harris’ mettle in a high pressure campaign. Harris’ 2016 Senate run was a blowout, and the lack of a competitive race — coupled with her home state’s reliance on TV advertising — has left her largely untested in retail politics at the highest level.

“The realities are that when somebody has as little experience as she has on a nationwide stage, the question is what happens when she gets punched in the gut?” said Darry Sragow, a longtime Democratic strategist in California. “What happens when she’s in tough situations? How does she handle the give and take of running for president of the United States? The question is how does she behave in the heat of battle, and that we may wind up getting to see.”

Harris was joined in Iowa by the full force of an organization that would likely form the core of a 2020 campaign. Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, was on hand, as well as Harris’ sister Maya Harris and Harris’ communications director, Lily Adams — both veterans of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Juan Rodriguez, who managed Harris’ Senate campaign, flew out from California for the visit, and Sean Clegg, a senior adviser, was expected to join Harris in Iowa later Monday.

Harris demurred when asked about running for president, urging Democrats to “please vote in the next 15 days, and get all your friends to vote.”

Jeff Link, an Iowa Democratic strategist, said Monday that local Democrats’ anticipation for Harris was on par with Booker. Following her community college visit, Harris was expected to attend a meet-and-greet in Warren County, before traveling to a rally in Polk County with Deidre DeJear, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state.

Harris is expected to stump for Democrats in Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls, Waterloo and Iowa City on Tuesday, and she is also fundraising for Democrat Cindy Axne, who is bidding to unseat Republican Rep. David Young in a competitive race.

Harris has said previously that she will “seriously take a look at” 2020 after the midterm elections.

But her advisers have already begun discussing a rough strategy for running in 2020. Harris, like former President Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, would rely heavily on a competitive showing in Iowa and a win in South Carolina, but with the early primary in her home state of California offering a potentially massive delegate haul.

The success of high-profile women and non-white Democrats in the primary elections this year appear to have bolstered Harris’ prospects as a candidate who could appeal to women and black voters critical in the Democratic presidential primary.

But national Republicans has moved to weaken Harris by emphasizing her progressive pedigree and her home state’s leftist politics, especially in the Midwest. The Republican National Committee dubbed her “California Kamala” when she traveled to Ohio this month, and when Harris campaigned alongside Sen. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin on Sunday, Jess Ward, campaign manager for Baldwin’s Republican challenger, Leah Vukmir, called Harris and Baldwin “two radical peas in a pod.”

Harris, addressing reporters before stumping for Wisconsin Democrats in Madison on Sunday, said she does not know what implications the midterms might hold for the presidential primary.

“I honestly don’t know,” she said, adding that with volatility in American politics recently, “It’s very difficult to predict what anything now is going to tell us about 2020.”

“Honestly, I’m not bullshitting you,” Harris said, before turning to a group of college student journalists in the room. “Excuse my language.”

She added, “I really, I don’t know what this all means for 2020. It really is far off.”