With no Donald Trump on stage to draw her fire, Fox News host Megyn Kelly took aim at the next two highest-ranking candidates during Thursday’s free-wheeling Republican debate, leveling Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio with a series of devastating video clips that turned their own words on immigration against them.

“Senator Rubio, we’ll start with you,” Kelly said, pointing out that the freshman lawmaker had vowed to oppose legalization and citizenship for illegal immigrants when he ran for Senate in 2010, playing footage of his promises at the time. “Within two years of getting elected you were co-sponsoring legislation to create a path to citizenship, in your words, amnesty. Haven’t you already proven that you cannot be trusted on this issue?” Rubio’s eyes widened. “I do not support amnesty,” he stumbled, as Kelly cut him off, repeating what he had, in fact said. Rubio pivoted to talking about ISIS, but Kelly wasn’t ready to let him off the hook. “Governor Bush, do you agree Senator Rubio has not reversed himself on his immigration promise?” she asked, allowing Jeb Bush to continue the argument for her as the two sparred over who was the bigger squish on immigration.

Ted Cuz was next to receive the video-montage treatment. “Senator Cruz, when Senator Rubio proposed that bill creating a path to citizenship, you proposed an amendment [that] would have allowed for legalization but not citizenship,” Kelly began, noting that he had since claimed to have been against legalization all along. “You argued that this was just a poison pill amendment,” she continued. “But that is not, however, how it sounded at the time. Watch.” In clip after clip, millions of Fox News viewers watched as grainy video captured the senator’s apparent betrayal. Cruz hit back at Kelly’s portrayal of his position, but the damage was done. For a candidate who’s staked his reputation on a hard-core commitment to his conservative base, the mask of sincerity had slipped. Kelly turned to Rand Paul to finish him off, asking the Kentucky senator if he bought Cruz’s response. “It’s a falseness,” he replied. “And that’s an authenticity problem.”

Trump’s absence from the G.O.P. debate should have been an opportunity for Cruz or Rubio to either seize his mantle or emerge as the single credible challenger to his so-far unstoppable electoral juggernaut. But with the senators set on a collision course over their past support for immigration reform—a moment both men wish voters would forget—the two emerged from the debate bloodied rather than triumphant.

“This is the lie that Ted’s campaign is built on,” Rubio said at one point, a line that Cruz could have deployed just as easily. “The truth is, you’ve been willing to say or do anything in order to get votes.”