Trump vs. Cruz Goes Tabloid
MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN HOST: I'm Michael Smerconish. Were Americans like this 19-year-old missionary the intended targets of this week's terror attacks in Belgium. I'll ask the former head of both the NSA and CIA. And Ted Cruz says claims of marital infidelity are garbage and he blames Donald Trump. Plus can the phrase vote for Trump be considered hate speech? Yes is the answer according to students that you'll meet from Emory University. But first, just when you thought it couldn't get any uglier, a presidential race that has already included references to the size of a candidate's manhood, it devolved even further, literally to the tabloid section of the newsstand with unsubstantiated claims of a candidate's marital infidelity, and rather than ignore it, Ted Cruz went on the offensive blaming Donald Trump for dirty tricks.</s>TED CRUZ, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Let me be clear, this "National Enquirer" story is garbage. Complete and utter lies and a tabloid smear and a smear that's come from Donald Trump and his henchmen.</s>SMERCONISH: Trump then issued a denial which read in part "I have no idea whether or not the cover story about Ted Cruz in this week's issue of "National Enquirer" is true or not, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it, did not know about it and have not, as of yet, read it, unlike lying Ted Cruz, I do not surround myself with political hacks and henchmen and then pretend total innocence." How did we get here? Well, in a word, Twitter. Earlier in the week after threatening to quote spill the beans about something having to do with Cruz' wife, Heidi, Trump retweeted this pairing of photos of Heidi and his own wife, Melania, with the nasty headline no need to spill the beans, the images are worth a thousand words. This was too much for Cruz during the debates had mostly taken the high road when Rubio got stuck in the mudslinging, Cruz came out swinging.</s>CRUZ: Donald does seem to have an issue with women. Donald doesn't like strong women. Strong women scare Donald. Real men don't try to bully women. Donald, you're a sniveling coward, and leave Heidi the hell alone.</s>SMERCONISH: And so sadly in a week where 31 lost their lives to ISIS, much of the debate on the GOP side of the aisle has been consumed with personal attacks among the frontrunners. Joining me now, three conservative women, senior writer from the "Federalist," CNN's Mary Katherine Ham, conservative blogger Crystal Wright and conservative opinion writer for "The Washington Post," Jennifer Rubin. Mary Katherine, there is nothing in this piece of substance, nothing that is substantiated, should Ted Cruz have even responded to it?</s>MARY KATHERINE HAM, SENIOR WRITER, "THE FEDERALIST": Well, I think Ted Cruz partly responded because he's angry about it, and secondly, he responded because rumors float around in politics, right, but only one candidate is besties with the guy who owns the "National Enquirer" which is willing to print said rumors and then a Trump supporter came on air and dropped it live on TV so that everybody feels licensed to talk about something that's completely unsubstantiated. So Ted goes "hey, I'm not really down with that, I'd like to talk about this."</s>SMERCONISH: Jennifer, haven't we learned from this cycle? You can ask President Marco Rubio about what I'm about to say that Donald Trump is the one who benefits any time the conversation is on something other than issues.</s>JENNIFER RUBIN, RIGHT TURN BLOG, "WASHINGTON POST': Absolutely. I think what happened this week was that Donald Trump saw some polls he didn't like. Ted Cruz is clearly making some progress in Wisconsin. His comments on foreign policy, I think, by Donald Trump were not very effective. Ted Cruz cut into those talking about surveillance in Muslim communities but also talking about the problems that Ted Cruz that Donald Trump would have, for example, withdrawing from NATO, nice substantive issues. So suddenly, the conversation turned to something that Donald Trump wasn't very good at which was substance or the polls going in the wrong direction, so what does he do? He throws a lot of dirt up in the air. Does his gorilla dance, the press plays along, picks up on this and as a result, we're off to the races talking about this sort of thing rather than serious issues. I also think that Ted Cruz is actually telegraphing to two sets of audiences. One is the general public but also are those delegates and those delegates are probably going to decide the nomination of the Republican Party and he is talking directly to those delegates saying "this guy is going to be horrible for the party. He's going to lose by a landslide. He has a woman problem." The Republican Party is going to be on defensive and he's also talking to them. I think that's what he has to do as he proceeds down this two-track process.</s>SMERCONISH: Crystal, I asked on my website this week whether spouses are ever fair game. Nearly 2,000 people cast a ballot and 73 percent of them said no. Now here is my question to you, it's easy for us to say leave the spouse alone. Do you think we mean it or do you think that it does have an impact when there is, not in this instance apparently but when in fact there is an issue pertaining to a spouse.</s>CRYSTAL WRIGHT, EDITOR BLOOGER, CONSERVATIVEBLACKCHICK.COM: I think spouses, wives should be off limits but let's remember who started this. It was the dump Trump pack, right? That ran an unflattering ad featuring Melania when she posed nude. And that really started this. And so what bothers me about the whole lets attack Trump is when Trump's opponents attack him, he's somehow to blame. I think it's just as plausible that Donald Trump didn't have anything to do with the "National Enquirer" alleged story as it's just possible that Ted Cruz din't know about the ad featuring Melania.</s>WRIGHT: Hold on, the only name -</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hold on -</s>WRIGHT: Roger Stone, he's best friends with the guy that owns --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Roger Stone --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm happy to mention --</s>SMERCONISH: Wait -</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.</s>SMERCONISH: Ladies, wait, wait, I want Crystal to finish and then Mary Katherine, I do want to hear what you have to say. Go ahead. Please.</s>WRIGHT: A, Roger Stone was fired from the Trump campaign. Last year they parted ways acromoniously. B, Katrina Pierson who is Donald Trump's blacks conservative spokeswoman was allegedly featured in the "National Enquirer" smear piece. I don't know why Donald Trump would leak a story about, that would involve his spokeswoman. So I don't think Donald Trump had anything to do about this. I think what everybody is really upset about, when you call Donald Trump voters and supporters stupid, this is what happens.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nobody is calling -</s>WRIGHT: Every day -</s>SMERCONISH: Mary Katherine. You respond -</s>WRIGHT: In the establishment calling Donald Trump voters stupid, Mary Katherine. You know that.</s>SMERCONISH: Go ahead, Mary Katherine.</s>HAM: And no one in this segment has done that, Crystal, so if you would stop talking about it, we can move on to what you're actually talking about which is this Melania Trump ad that came out which is a real thing and was like on the sleazy side of politics, right? But here's what Donald Trump does. Donald Trump doesn't both to look up who put out that tiny Facebook ad about his wife. He goes straight to nasty direct attacks on Heidi Cruz and then he starts retweeting -</s>WRIGHT: Defended his wife.</s>HAM: Saying ha, ha, Heidi is ugly.</s>WRIGHT: Mary Katherine, you're right. I don't agree with the retweet of putting Heidi next to Melania but when you attack his wife, he's going to defend himself. Do I agree with that?</s>RUBIN: He is not -</s>HAM: Here is the - WRIGHT Gutter - Get out of the gutter --</s>SMERCONISH: Jennifer.</s>HAM: People that support Donald Trump allow him to attack and counter attack with any rules that he -</s>WRIGHT: Here is just what you said. No -</s>HAM: No, he observes most standards -</s>WRIGHT: Of Donald trump.</s>HAM: He observes --</s>SMERCONISH: Jennifer, take the floor. I want to hear your thoughts.</s>RUBIN: All right. If everybody would stop crosstalking then we would be able to hear one another. Listen, Donald Trump attacks Ted Cruz because he wants to attack Cruz. He isn't hurt that his wife has been attacked. He uses these incidents as excuses to redirect attention away from his opponents and towards himself. This mayor who put the ad has nothing to do with the Trump campaign, has nothing to do with the Cruz campaign, is an independent broker running around on her own. We can debate the merits of what she did or not. But it's clear and not even the Trump campaign I think when pressed would think Liz Maer (ph) is working for Ted Cruz -</s>WRIGHT: What's clear, Jennifer, I'm not sure it's clear that Ted Cruz didn't know about that ad.</s>RUBIN: That's ridiculous. You have know -</s>SMERCONISH: I want to show all three of you some poll results about Donald Trump's standing among females regardless of who shot John, these numbers tell a story and the story they tell is that 73 percent of all female voters have an unfavorable image of Donald Trump. If you then look at the internals on Republican women, it's a pretty staggering nearly 40 percent. So the question, Mary Katherine, is how can he overcome this if he should become the standard bearer and compete with Hillary Clinton.</s>HAM: Look, I think Donald Trump has shown an ability to overcome all sorts of bad polling during this part of the race, so I don't put much past him. But look, this is a serious obstacle and it becomes more serious when he shows that every time a woman confronts him, he's happy to go after them on twitter or go off half-cocked in a press conference and it gets worse and worse all the time.</s>SMERCONISH: Crystal, Hillary Clinton must be loving this. I mean I have a montage. I'm not even going to take the time to show it to you. I'm sure you've seen all the different statements that he's made and if you string them together, it's an ad against Trump that writes itself. Explain to me the scenario in the fall where he could win.</s>WRIGHT: I agree with Mary Katherine. I don't agree with everything she's saying about Donald Trump but the party and Donald Trump has a problem with women. That said, what I would like to see the Republican Party do and the candidates who are still left in the game, where are all these great conservative women as se surrogates. You've seen Hillary built a similar coalition of what Obama did in 2012 -</s>RUBIN: Carly Fiorina is one.</s>WRIGHT: Wait. Hold on, Jennifer.</s>RUBIN: Carly Fiorina is one.</s>WRIGHT: I know. Hold on, Jennifer, I'm agreeing. I think all of us right now in the panel could be great surrogates in some form or another for the various candidates.</s>RUBIN: We're not surrogates, we're independent journalists.</s>WRIGHT: Jennifer -</s>RUBIN: We're independent surrogates, we're not surrogates for the campaign.</s>WRIGHT: You want to start crossing over me, I'm actually trying to make a point where I think we can all agree. Our party, whether you're talking about the halls of Congress, the RNC or all these other groups, our party is really good at having white older men talk about pro-life issues, talk about women's issues and that is why Mitt Tomney lost the woman vote in 2012. We need to do better whether it's Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, John Kasich. Carly Fiorina is one woman. I think we all agree, we got to do better. All of us should be talking about -</s>RUBIN: I think you're in a time warp. I think you're in a time warp.</s>WRIGHT: OK.</s>RUBIN: We have a very diverse candidate pool that we started off with. We have women like -</s>WRIGHT: Well, I don't name call, Jennifer. I don't name call -</s>RUBIN: All right.</s>HAM: One last thing --</s>SMERCONISH: I'm glad we solved this.</s>HAM: We do have a problem when Donald Trump supporters on air make excuses for his behavior and when some of them, women themselves bring up substantiated stories on air so this gets into the main stream. That's a problem for women vote.</s>SMERCONISH: Thank you all three for being here.</s>WRIGHT: I don't think all women should be put in a box.</s>SMERCONISH: Mary Katherine Ham, Crystal Wright, Jennifer Rubin, to be continued. I should point out that none of this has been substantiated and the women who had been referenced, they all say it is garbage. Tell me what you think. Tweet me @smerconish and I will air some throughout today's program. Also, tune in this Tuesday, 8:00 p.m. Eastern, when Anderson Cooper moderates a town hall with the three Republican presidential hopefuls. They'll be live from Milwaukee, one week before the crucial Wisconsin primary. Still to come, were the ISIS bombs in Belgium targeting American victims? And what's being done to prevent future attacks? Also, why are so many of these terror attacks in Brussels, the Boston marathon, even September 11 committed by teams of brothers. And Trump's inspiring a huge surge in voter registration this year especially in my home state of Pennsylvania, but are voters for him, against him or gaming the system?