Michael Grunwald is a senior staff writer for Politico Magazine.

Donald Trump skipped last night’s Fox News debate in a fit of pique over the “very biased” Megyn Kelly. But since the shocking things he does and says always seem to work out for him, someone else used his pet issue of immigration to tie his top Republican rivals into knots. And that someone else was Megyn Kelly.

Kelly flummoxed Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, currently polling second and third in Iowa, with brutal video montages that vividly demonstrated their flip-flops on immigration reform. To make things even more delicious for Trump, his other favorite bullying target, “low-energy” Jeb Bush, helped twist the knife into Rubio. And another one of his punching bags, Rand Paul, helped deliver the beatdown to Cruz.


It’s hard to see how the debate could have gone any better for Trump than if he had actually participated. Meanwhile, Democrats who hope to expand their majorities among Latino voters had to enjoy watching two Cuban-American Republicans scrambling to walk back their previous flirtations with reform.

The star of the show was Kelly, the allegedly anti-Trump “lightweight” who devoted an entire segment to shredding Rubio and Cruz over immigration. She began by airing several video clips of Rubio promising to oppose amnesty when he ran for Senate in 2010, at one point arguing that an “earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty.” She then pointed out that in the Senate, Rubio helped lead the push for a bill that included an earned path to citizenship.

“Haven’t you already proven that you cannot be trusted on this issue?” Kelly asked.

When Rubio tried to wriggle away, arguing that the “earned citizenship” he opposed in 2010 was different than the “earned citizenship” he supported in 2013, Kelly threw a softball to Bush: “Do you agree Senator Rubio has not reversed himself on his immigration promise?” Bush essentially committed the Republican primary equivalent of a murder-suicide, reminding the audience that he and Rubio both supported versions of amnesty—but that only Rubio lacked the guts to admit it.

“He cut and run because it wasn’t popular among conservatives, I guess,” Bush said.

Bush acknowledged that his position might not be popular in the primary, but with a touch of charming I’m-not-Trump self-deprecation, he urged the audience to read his book stating his case, Immigration Wars. “You can get it at $2.99 on Amazon,” Bush said. “It’s not a best-seller, I can promise you.” When Rubio pointed out that Bush had changed his position on citizenship, Bush didn’t even deny it.

“So did you,” he said.

Rubio seemed taken aback. “Well, but you changed the—in the book …”

“Yeah,” Bush countered. “So did you, Marco.”

Immigration is the issue that most starkly divides the Republican base—which loves Trump’s push for a giant wall and mass deportations—from the Republican establishment. That’s both the business establishment, which supports a free flow of immigration for labor-supply reasons, and the political establishment, which worries that anti-immigrant positions will alienate Latinos and keep the GOP out of the White House. While Rubio has tried to thread the needle during the primary, renouncing his support for his own reform bill but retaining some nuance on the issue, Cruz has portrayed himself as a Trump-style hard-liner, touting his support from reform opponents like Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Rep. Steve King of Iowa.

Cruz once filed an amendment to Rubio’s bill that would have created a path to “legalization,” but he has argued that it was really a poison pill designed to kill reform. Last night, though, Kelly effectively quashed that argument, playing several clips of Cruz insisting that he did want reform to pass. “Was that all an act?” Kelly asked him. “It was pretty convincing!” After Cruz flailed around for a few minutes, arguing that it was unfair for Kelly to focus on 38 words in a 1,000-page bill, Kelly turned to Rand Paul, yet another frequent target of Trump’s barbs. “Senator Paul, you know how Washington works,” she said. “Do you buy that?”

Paul—who has denounced Trump as unfit for office, and who has been mocked by Trump for his poll numbers and even his looks—obligingly continued the evisceration of Cruz. “He can’t have it both ways,” he said. “What is particularly insulting is, he’s the king of saying ‘You’re for amnesty.’ Everyone’s for amnesty except for Ted Cruz. But it’s a falseness, and that’s an authenticity problem … I was for legalization. So was Ted—but now he says he wasn’t. That’s not true.”

To recap: Megyn Kelly, derided by Trump as a vapid Trump basher, along with Jeb Bush and Rand Paul, derided by Trump as pathetic losers, led the attacks on Trump’s leading competitors. And in the process, they helped remind Republican primary voters worried about immigration that Bush, Paul, Rubio and Cruz all have supported versions of amnesty. Of course, Trump was conveniently absent, so he didn’t have to field any tough questions about his own inconsistencies on immigration or other issues, from Kelly or anyone else.

At this rate, Trump might get a chance to skip his own inaugural.