Some of the ugliest moments in the 2016 Republican nominating contest came when Donald Trump attacked Sen. Ted Cruz\u2019s family. Trump baselessly suggested Cruz\u2019s father might have participated in John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassination, and he both attacked the appearance of Cruz\u2019s wife and threatened to \u201cspill the beans\u201d on her.<\/p>\n
Cruz\u2019s response? To call Trump a \u201csniveling coward\u201d and telling him to \u201cleave Heidi the hell alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,\u201d the Texas Republican added later at the Republican National Convention.<\/p>\n
Cruz, of course, was soon supporting that same \u201csniveling coward\u201d \u2014 and has done so for the past eight years. When it emerged recently that a Trump adviser was actually involved in planting the story about Cruz\u2019s father in the National Enquirer, Cruz declined to re-litigate the issue.<\/p>\n
Republican officeholders have spent the better part of a decade shrugging off Trump\u2019s personal attacks and sidelining their pride in the name of being a team player. But on few counts has that been as pronounced as when he\u2019s gone after family members.<\/p>\n
Repeatedly this election cycle, Trump has invoked the spouses and family of Republicans who have criticized him. And repeatedly, those Republicans have stood by Trump because he\u2019s the party\u2019s standard-bearer.<\/p>\n
The most recent example came this weekend in Georgia, when Trump made a point to attack not just Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) but also his wife, Marty.<\/p>\n
Trump cited Marty Kemp having said recently that she isn\u2019t planning to vote for Trump, even as her husband has come around to the party\u2019s nominee.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow she says she won\u2019t Endorse me, and is going to \u2018write in Brian Kemp\u2019s name,\u2019\u201d Trump posted on Truth Social. \u201cWell, I don\u2019t want her Endorsement, and I don\u2019t want his.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump added at a rally in Atlanta: \u201cI haven\u2019t earned her endorsement? I have nothing to do with her.\u201d<\/p>\n
The governor responded by echoing Cruz\u2019s 2016 admonition, urging Trump in an X post to \u201cleave my family out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Kemp otherwise suggested he would still help Trump, saying, \u201cMy focus is on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pattern was also evident at last month\u2019s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where two former primary foes whose spouses Trump had criticized spoke on his behalf.<\/p>\n
Trump during the primary campaign had suggestively pointed to the absence of Nikki Haley\u2019s husband, Michael, who was in fact deployed to Africa as a member of the South Carolina National Guard at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s her husband? Oh, he\u2019s away,\u201d Trump said, adding: \u201cWhat happened to her husband? Where is he? He\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump also said Michael Haley should \u201ccome back home to help save her [Haley\u2019s] dying campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haley responded at the time by saying, \u201cSomeone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander in chief.\u201d But by last month, she used her convention speech to play up Trump\u2019s foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Trump also falsely accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019s (R) wife, Casey, of trying to \u201ccommit organized voter fraud\u201d for comments she made about supporters from outside Iowa helping with her husband\u2019s campaign there. His campaign cited the DeSantises\u2019 \u201copenly stated plot to rig the Caucus through fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has also endorsed Trump despite Trump\u2019s racist attacks on his wife, Taiwan-born former Trump administration transportation secretary Elaine Chao. Trump has also made repeated insinuations about the couple\u2019s ties to China.<\/p>\n
McConnell endorsed Trump in March. At the time, he was asked about Trump\u2019s attacks on his wife and about the senator\u2019s assertion that Trump was culpable for Jan. 6. McConnell simply repeated his past promise to support Trump if Trump won the nomination.<\/p>\n
Former Texas land commissioner George P. Bush has supported Trump even after Trump\u2019s attacks on his father (former Florida governor Jeb Bush) and his uncle (former president George W. Bush), as well as social media posts suggesting his mother\u2019s Mexican heritage influenced Jeb Bush\u2019s immigration policies.<\/p>\n
Trump has made little secret of his propensity for attacking family members. He\u2019s done it repeatedly with judges, prosecutors and others who run afoul of him. Less than a year before the assassination attempt against him, he made light of an attack that left former House speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s (D-Calif.) husband, Paul, with serious head injuries.<\/p>\n
There are certainly gradations to Trump\u2019s invocations of spouses; the attacks on Chao and Heidi Cruz are in a different ballpark than what Trump said about Michael Haley and Marty Kemp.<\/p>\n
But few things demonstrate Trump\u2019s domination of the Republican Party like the fact that he can go there and still maintain the support of these Republicans. And he appears increasingly intent upon driving that home.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Some of the ugliest moments in the 2016 Republican nominating contest came when Donald Trump attacked Sen. Ted Cruz\u2019s family. Trump baselessly suggested Cruz\u2019s father might have participated in John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassination, and he both attacked the appearance of Cruz\u2019s wife and threatened to \u201cspill the beans\u201d on her. Cruz\u2019s response? To call Trump […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}