Ted Cruz, Wife Fire Back After Donald Trump 'Spill The Beans On Your Wife' Tweet
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The wife of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is speaking out after Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump threatened to "spill the beans" on her after an anti-Trump super PAC ran an ad using a naked photo of the billionaire's wife Melania Trump.
"Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!" Trump said.
Trump tweeted, then deleted, then tweeted again his comment toward the Texas senator.
On Tuesday, Cruz shot back on Twitter, "Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought. #classless"
Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought. #classless https://t.co/0QpKSnjgnE
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 23, 2016
The senator's wife hit back at Trump on the campaign trail in Wisconsin.
"You probably know by now, what Donald Trump says has no basis in reality, so we're focusing on our campaign," Heidi Cruz said.
She continued, "I have one job on this campaign, and it is to be helping Ted win this race. And it is, I think, the easiest job in the world, and that is to speak the truth: what I know about my husband, our family, myself."
Heidi Cruz also denied the photo of Melania Trump came from the Cruz campaign.
The Texas senator called it a "new low" for Trump.
"I would say even for Donald that he's reached a new low. It's one thing to attack another candidate, and another to come after my wife," Ted Cruz said. "She's amazing and for Donald to try to pick a character battle with her is way out of his league."
The tweet storm stems from a Facebook ad launched by Make America Awesome, an anti-Trump super PAC founded by Republican strategist Liz Mair. The ad uses a photo where Melania Trump posed nude for British GQ magazine in 2000.
"Meet Melania Trump, your next first lady. Or, you could support Ted Cruz on Tuesday," the ad said.
Vox reports the ad targeted Mormons ahead of Utah's Republican presidential primary on Tuesday.
Mair told Vox the ad was not "slut-shaming" the former model.
"The fact is, the image in the ad – for which Melania Trump apparently willingly posed and has long been widely available online – isn't objectionable because she's nude or because it implies she's 'promiscuous.' (which, by the way, it doesn't, though it does suggest she may have bigger hands than Donald)," Mair said in an email to Vox. "It's objectionable because in typical porn/porn-lite fashion, it features her handcuffed to a briefcase, looking vulnerable and sends an implicit message of female subservience, as a lot of photos of tethered, naked women produced for male titillation and consumption do. And Mormon women don't much like that."
On Wednesday, Trump again tweeted suggesting Cruz was behind the ad.
Despite the controversy, CBS2's Alice Gainer reports Trump captured the Arizona Republican primary, but came in third place to Cruz in Utah.
Voters stood in line for hours in Arizona to cast their ballot.
Cruz picked up the endorsement of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won the Arizona Democratic primary, while Sen. Bernie Sanders took home Utah and Idaho.
"This is a contest between fundamentally different views of our country, our values and our future," the former secretary of state said.
Clinton now has 1,688 delegates, while Sanders has 940.