Thread: Let’s uproot the pernicious, unproven claim that Ted Cruz attacked Donald Trump’s wif

Let’s uproot the pernicious, unproven claim that Ted Cruz attacked Donald Trump’s wife
By Philip Bump March 27 at 2:50 PM

There is no evidence that Ted Cruz attacked Donald Trump's wife.

In a normal election year, this statement would be relatively uncontroversial. After all, it's true. Yes, there was an ad that ran in Utah, suggesting that because she had posed for provocative modeling photos, she was somehow unfit to be first lady. But, no, that ad was not from the Cruz campaign. It was from the Make America Awesome super PAC, a group that raises and spends money without input from any candidate, including Cruz.

How do I know that? Well, I know that if such a political action committee were to coordinate with Cruz -- say, by running an ad at his behest -- it would be a federal crime. I know a presidential candidate purposefully violating federal law is almost certainly not worth the risk. I know that Cruz was going to win Utah anyway, by a wide margin, so violating federal law to win with 70 percent of the vote versus 65 percent is a particularly dumb idea.

But this is not how Donald Trump tells it.

"From what I hear," he told ABC's Jonathan Karl on "This Week" on Sunday, "[Cruz] and his campaign went out and bought the cover shoot." The image in the ad was from a spread in GQ magazine.

"From what I hear," he continued, "somebody bought the rights to it and he was the one or his campaign bought the rights and they gave it to the super PAC."

This is actually a more detailed critique than Trump offered when he first broached the subject, which he did on Twitter last week. Then, it was "Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad." Now, at least, Trump suggests that the ad wasn't Cruz's.

But what he suggested to Karl is still a crime. This is why campaigns now record lengthy video segments and put them out in public, so that PACs can legally use B-roll footage of candidates in their ads without coordinating with the campaigns. Cruz's team can't buy anything and give it to the PAC in private, even if it did want to violate federal law to toss a few extra percentage-point pebbles into its Utah landslide. Which -- again! -- there's no evidence that it did.

We expect this from Trump by now. Trump says things, and they are wrong. People note that they are wrong, and Trump and his supporters don't care. That's the pattern.

Trump is aided in this case by his having tilled the soil of suggesting that Cruz is unethical or a cheater by accusing the senator from Texas of stealing votes in Iowa and lying (which is why Trump calls him "Lyin' Ted") -- accusations with little basis in reality.

What's frustrating about this particular scenario, though, is that it's not just Trump who's conflating Cruz with the super PAC that ran the ad. (A super PAC, mind you, that can be taken at face value when it says that its priority is less Cruz's being the nominee than Trump's not being the nominee.) It's a common conflation among television pundits, too.

BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski spotted this interview on Fox News's "The O'Reilly Factor."

"I have to mention that Senator Ted Cruz is a raving hypocrite," Geraldo Rivera, a Fox News host, said, "for not mentioning that it was his super PAC that ran the Melania nude picture on the eve of the Utah, Mormon-heavy Utah caucuses, so Cruz starts it."

Rivera is corrected. His response? "I think there is coordination, even if it is just whispers and nods." Viewers are left with the impression that this is just a point of disagreement between Rivera and the host, not that Rivera is making a serious charge without evidence.

And he's not alone. On Friday night on CNN, Former contestant on Trump's "Apprentice" Omarosa Manigault made a similar claim -- repeatedly. In a debate with Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, Manigault claimed that Cruz had started the attacks on wives.

"You and others all across Twitter," Conway said, "are saying that Ted Cruz and his camp has posted pictures and insulted Melania Trump. I was on the show --"

"He has," Manigault said.

"He has not!" Conway replied.

"He has," Manigault replied.

There's the rebuttal. Either out of ignorance or out of denial, Manigault (and others) are accusing Cruz of illegally coordinating with a PAC because it just sort of seems like something a politician might do. Whispers and nods. Of course this happens. That's how it works!

It isn't. Most candidates abide by both the written and the unspoken rules of political campaigns. By implying without presenting any evidence that Cruz did the former, Trump and his allies are doing the latter.

Just another day in 2016.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...d-trumps-wife/

Philip Bump, why are you writing this story without doing any investigative journalism? Have you or anyone else interviewed Liz Mair and Rick Wilson who run the Make America Awesome PAC? Have you interviewed the Texas Lobbyist and Cruz Operative who started an Anti-Melania Trump campaign weeks ago? Have you contacted GQ and asked them who they worked with in the sale or publishing rights to the photo? It's GQ Britain by the way, so it's an international call. Hopefully the Washington Post has phone lines that will connect you. Have you asked for copies of the photo documentation giving the PAC rights to publish the photo? It's quite possible that Melania receives a royalty from clients for her pictures. Have you interviewed Glenn Beck and Carly Fiorina or any of their staffers about what they know about it, because they were traveling with both Heidi and Ted Cruz the days before and up to the Utah Caucus and would have access to such information, knowledge, giggles and whatever? Have you interviewed Mitt Romney the leader of the STOP TRUMP campaign in Utah in favor of Cruz who by the way is on record at an NRCC dinner mocking Trump's wives because they're foreign-born doing jobs Americans won't do? All 3 of Trumps wives, 2 former and the present are US citizens, 2 are foreign-born naturalized citizens.Melania due to her being a foreign-born wife of Donald Trump? Melania is a naturalized US citizen but was born in Slovenia. Have you interviewed Heidi Cruz or Ted Cruz?

Donald and Melania Trump are fully entitled to believe based on the events, the parties, the beneficiary, the statements, the region involved and all related politicial events to stop his campaign, along with their own business and political experiences to conclude Ted Cruz and the Ted Cruz campaign not only knew about, but were responsible for it.

Everyone involved in this anti-Melania campaign should be targets of your articles, from Andrea McWilliams, the Texas lobbyist, to Liz Mair the dual-citizen wacko-bird, the nasty repugnant Rick Wilson, Carly Fiorina attacking Donald Trump now presumably hoping for a VP slot, Glenn Beck who is attacking Christians on behalf of Ted Cruz, and yes of course little Heidi and Ted Cruz because they knew about all these anti-Melania efforts for weeks, knew about the ad, NEVER denounced the ad, never said "we don't support this", never wrote the PAC and said pull the ad with my name on it, never said or did anything to stop it even though they knew the ad was running and knew McWilliams was leading an anti-Melania campaign, something Romney knew and everyone knew except Trump until it makes its way to him the night of the Utah Caucus.

Heck, I bet even you knew about it Phil. You knew didn't you? You knew about Romney's anti-Melania statement at the NRCC dinner, the whole of DC knew about it. Tee Hee! Giggle Giggle!

Yet you choose to write this article playing dumb to logic to defend Ted Cruz. Why?

Selling your soul is a bad move in the world of real journalism, but maybe you've decided that's not really the profession you want to work in any more.

WaPo used to be a highly respected newspaper. Now it's just a Rag of the Rich in DC tabloid employing writers who would rather write copy from comments instead of reports facts from inquiry.

What goes around, comes around, and whoever decided to run the Cruz Sex Scandal article at the National Enquirer got you all with your pants down and your bias exposed.