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Donald Trump branded a 'coward' by Ted Cruz amid feud over their wives Donald Trump branded a 'coward' by Ted Cruz amid feud over their wives
(about 5 hours later)
Ted Cruz has branded Donald Trump a “sniveling coward” as the feud between the Republican presidential contenders over their wives took a nastier turn. It’s been a big week on the campaign trail for Ted Cruz. Endorsements have trickled in from former challengers and colleagues alike, as the remnants of a Republican establishment consolidated around him in a last-ditch attempt to stop Donald Trump from winning the nomination.
After an earlier and vague threat to “spill the beans” about Heidi Cruz, Trump stoked the spat on Twitter when he retweeted side-by-side images of Cruz’s wife and his own wife, Melania. On Tuesday he won a resounding and decisive victory in Utah. And on Wednesday, in response to the terrorist attacks in Brussels, the Texas senator proposed US law enforcement officials should “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods”.
“No need to spill the beans,” said the caption. “The images are worth a thousand words.”
Ted Cruz, campaigning in Wisconsin, was livid.
“I don’t get angry often,” he told reporters. “But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that’ll do it every time.
“Donald, you’re a sniveling coward – leave Heidi the hell alone.”
Cruz added: “Donald does seem to have an issue with women,. Donald doesn’t like strong women. Strong women scare Donald.”
Trump was set off this week when a group that opposes him released an ad before the Utah presidential contest raising questions about the propriety of Melania Trump becoming first lady. The ad showed a provocative, decade-old magazine photo of her when she was a model and before she married Trump.
Trump wrongly attributed the ad to the Cruz campaign and warned on Twitter: “Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”
For the Republicans, the lurch into personal territory normally off limits in campaigns came as an anti-Trump super political action committee ran an ad in primary states that features women reciting derogatory comments made by the billionaire about women. The ad was produced by Our Principles, a group founded by a former Mitt Romney campaign adviser who is trying to help the Republican Party appeal to more women.
Trump has a substantial lead in the delegate chase for the Republican nomination. Cruz faces a struggle to catch him in remaining races and may only have a shot at the nomination if the contest spills into the convention in Cleveland in July.
On the Democratic side, front-runner Hillary Clinton warned that “hot rhetoric and demagoguery” can be offensive and dangerous.
Her remarks at a round-table discussion on keeping communities safe from radicalization and terrorism echoed criticism she made a day earlier of Trump and his Republican rivals. Speaking at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Clinton warned that voices that could bring communities together can be “drowned out by politics, by partisanship”.
Related: Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have gone full caveman | Jessica ValentiRelated: Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have gone full caveman | Jessica Valenti
Also on Thursday, Clinton said she would mount an aggressive campaign across California and compete to win over “every voter in it.” Yet it was Donald Trump and his late-night tweets that once again roiled the political world as the two leading contenders for the Republican nomination descended into an ugly, personal war of words, culminating in Cruz’s proclamation that Trump was a “sniveling coward”.
Her remarks to reporters in Los Angeles came a day after rival Bernie Sanders predicted he would claim the nation’s most populous state in its 7 June primary, so long as he gets a strong turnout. Clinton also appeared to be looking beyond the Democratic primaries. She called California an “exclamation point” on the primary season, but adds that it’s “important to get ready and organized for the fall election”. The New York real estate developer was incensed by an advertisement run by an anti-Trump Super Pac, which featured a photo of his wife, former model Melania Trump, taken during a nude photo shoot.
Clinton carried California in the 2008 Democratic primary, when she was running against Barack Obama. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, carried the state in 1992 and 1996. The ad, which apparently targeted Utah’s conservative Mormon voters, said: “Meet Melania Trump. Your next first lady. Or, you could support Ted Cruz on Tuesday.” Cruz has since denounced the ad, and his campaign has no affiliation with the Super Pac that created it.
But Trump has continued to blame the senator, who he refers to as “Lyin’ Ted”. After cryptically threatening to “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife Heidi, he manually retweeted a photo from a supporter that juxtaposed an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz with one of Melania Trump. The accompanying text read: “No need to ‘spill the beans’. The images are worth a thousand words.”
On Wednesday, Cruz, borrowed a line from the movie The American President to defend his wife, who suffered a bout of depression many years ago, against the unspecified threats from Trump.
“If Donald wants to get in a character fight, he’s better off sticking with me because Heidi is way out of his league,” Cruz said during an interview with CNN.
By Friday, after slowly escalating the fight all week, Cruz had finally had enough of Trump’s menacing attacks.
“You’re a sniveling coward,” the senator told reporters during a campaign stop in Wisconsin. “Leave Heidi the hell alone.”
But Trump continued to push. “I didn’t start the fight with Lyin’ Ted Cruz over the GQ cover pic of Melania, he did,” Trump Tweeted on Friday. “He knew the Pac was putting it out – hence, Lyin’ Ted!”
On Friday, the National Enquirer, an American tabloid, opened a new front of attack, with a front page story that accuses the evangelical senator of carrying on multiple extramarital affairs. The report, thinly sourced and unsubstantiated, quotes a source identified as a Washington insider who claims to be “digging into at least five affairs Ted Cruz supposedly had”.
Cruz denied the allegations during a press conference on Friday, calling the National Enquirer story “garbage” and accused “Donald and his henchmen” of being behind the report.
The spouses and family members of political candidates have long been considered off-limits from personal attacks. This week’s battle between the two leading contenders for the Republican nomination has renewed concerns about the tone and tenor of the race, especially as it careens toward a showdown with the woman best poised to become the nation’s first female president.
The rhetoric from the Republican side of the presidential race is noticeably “hyper-masculine”, said Adrienne Kimmell, executive director of the Barbara Lee Family, which tracks gender dynamics in the 2016 race. She noted noted the recent emphasis on hand size, and even the intense focus given to Florida senator Marco Rubio’s heeled boots. (Rubio dropped out of the race earlier this month after losing his home state to Trump.)
The battle between Trump and Cruz is no exception, she observed. Even the way the senator has defended his wife is a showcase of manliness.
“There’s so much hyper masculine shaming. For example, Cruz calls Trump cowardly,” Kimmell said. “That’s a loaded term from a gender perspective. A man doesn’t want to be a coward. That’s not a masculine word.”
Kimmell expects more collisions along gendered lines as the election season wears on, especially if the end result is a head to head between Trump and Clinton.
“It’s hard not to see this getting worse, especially if [Trump] faces a female opponent,” Kimmell said. “But for now, on the Republican side at least, it’s like: may the most hyper-masculine man win.”
Related: US election delegate tracker: chart the candidates' path to the nomination
The skirmish erupted as Cruz slid to victory in Utah’s primary, clinching all of the state’s delegates and sustaining anti-Trump supporters’ hope that the businessman can yet be kept from winning the nomination. Cruz has sought to cast himself as the party’s last and best hope to defeat Trump and save the party from a bruising battle against Hillary Clinton in November’s general election.
“Donald is a gift to Hillary Clinton,” Cruz told reporters at a press conference in New York following his Utah win. Trump still maintains a significant delegate lead and is more than half-way to 1,237 delegates he needs to capture the party’s nomination.