Trump books 8,000-seat arena for Texas rally he boasted would be in the 'biggest stadium in Texas we can find' as he hits the road for Ted Cruz

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President Trump is fulfilling a promise to campaign for Ted Cruz at a rally in Texas next week. Trump's pledge to hold the event in 'the biggest stadium in Texas we can find' isn't panning out, as well, though. 

The Trump campaign announced Monday evening that the Oct. 22 rally would be held NRG Arena in Houston, Texas. The venue holds 8,000 people. 

San Antonio's AT&T Center, an indoor arena, boasts a capacity of 19,000 people for concerts and functions like the one being put on by Cruz and Trump. 

Other outdoor venues like AT&T Stadium in Arlington - home of the Dallas Cowboys - can seat more than 100,000 people. 

Yet, Trump chose to campaign with Cruz at a much smaller venue in Houston. 

President Trump is fulfilling a promise to campaign for Ted Cruz at a rally in Texas next week. Trump's pledge to hold the event in 'the biggest stadium in Texas we can find' isn't panning out, as well, though

The Trump campaign announced Monday evening that the Oct. 22 rally would be held NRG Arena in Houston, Texas. The venue holds 8,000 people

Cruz's race for reelection to the U.S. Senate against Democrat Beto O'Rourke has become one of the surprising competitive contests of the cycle

A request for comment from the Cruz campaign on the venue went unanswered on Tuesday morning.

It could be that Cruz needs extra help in Houston, which was ranked the third most liberal of Texas' metropolises in a 2014 study conducted by the American Political Science Review. San Antonio was seen as moderate while Arlington is very conservative, making it the perfect area to attract a large Trump crowd.

Cruz's race for reelection to the U.S. Senate against Democrat Beto O'Rourke has become one of the surprising competitive contests of the cycle. 

Up an average of seven points now according to Real Clear Politics, the sitting senator appears to be in the home stretch. But some polls this month still have Cruz's win in the margin of error.

Trump said in late August that he would be campaigning for Cruz after the Republican's home state was noticeably left off the White House's list of fall targets.

'I will be doing a major rally for Senator Ted Cruz in October. I’m picking the biggest stadium in Texas we can find,' Trump tweeted. 'As you know, Ted has my complete and total Endorsement. His opponent is a disaster for Texas - weak on Second Amendment, Crime, Borders, Military, and Vets!'

Trump is coming to Cruz's rescue even though the  two men had an especially nasty fight on the campaign trail about Cruz's father, Rafael, in 2016

Trump said he would be campaigning for Cruz after the Republican's home state was noticeably left off the White House's list of fall targets

Cruz had said he would welcome him to the state, where he has been a junior senator since 2013, if the president wanted to campaign there.

'I would certainly welcome his support, and I hope to see him in Texas,' he said, according to the Dallas Morning News.

The freshman senator told the Houston Chronicle he'd spoken to the president about campaigning for him ahead of the mid-terms.

'I think we are likely to see the president down in Texas before the election,' he said.

Cruz's home state was missing from the White House's list of targeted races, however, casting doubt that Trump would come to Cruz's rescue.

The two men had an especially nasty fight on the campaign trail about Cruz's father, Rafael.

'His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,' Trump told Fox News. 'What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don't even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.'

Trump was parroting a National Enquirer story that claimed Cruz's father was paling around with John F. Kennedy's killer. 

The president said: 'I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?

'It’s horrible,' he commented. 

Cruz's campaign called it 'another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage' at the time to the Miami Herald. 

In a tweet that winter, Trump asked how Cruz could be an 'Evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest?'

Trump also threatened to 'spill the beans' on Cruz's wife, Heidi, and retweeted an unflattering photo of her compared to his own, ex-model, spouse, Melania.

The Texas senator was the last man standing in the race against the businessman.

In a desperate attempt to knock Trump out in the final days of the race, Cruz called him a 'serial philanderer,' a 'pathological liar,' a 'narcissist' and 'utterly amoral.'

He refused in a speech at Trump's nominating convention to endorse the GOP nominee, earning boos from attendees. 

'I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,' Cruz said the next day. 'That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander my wife that I am going to come like a servile puppy dog for maligning my wife and maligning my father.'

Trump said in response that he didn't want Cruz's endorsement and wouldn't accept it, even if the Texas senator offered it.

'Ted, stay home, relax, enjoy yourself,' Trump told him.

They mended fences after the race, and Trump endorsed Cruz and a line-up of other politicians this spring at the National Rifle Association's convention in Dallas. 

The president's promise to campaign for his 2016 opponent in an unusually competitive general election race dovetails comparisons of Cruz's opponent, Beto O'Rourke, to a young Barack Obama

The president's promise to campaign for his 2016 opponent in an unusually competitive general election race dovetails comparisons of Cruz's opponent, Beto O'Rourke, to a young Barack Obama. 

An article on O'Rourke over the summer suggested that the Texas Democrat could challenge and beat Trump in 2020.

'O’Rourke offers not just a path to victory in Texas but an antidote to the entire stupid artifice of American politics in the Trump era,' Snapchat head of news Peter Hamby wrote this week in Vanity Fair. 'He’s authentic, full of energy, and stripped of consultant-driven sterility. On what planet is Beto O’Rourke not a presidential contender, even if he loses?' 

Cruz is up eight over O'Rourke in a New York Times poll this month. Emerson has the race just outside the margin-of-error with a five-point spread in Cruz's favor.