Donald Trump and Ted Cruz goes twitter fighting on 'wifey'

Ted Cruz attacked Donald Trump’s character for threatening his wife on Tuesday and blamed his opponent's attack on “a very bad night” in Utah.

“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 on CNN’s “New Day,” responding to a late-night tweet from Trump warning, "Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”

The attack reveals a lot about Trump's character, Cruz said. "That should be beneath Donald," he said. "The reason he's doing that is because he had a very bad night last night. He got clobbered in Utah."

Trump’s tweet — which began with “Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad" — is an apparent reference to an online ad by anti-Trump super PAC Make America Awesome, which used a photo of Trump’s wife Melania posing nude in British GQ in 2000 in an attempt to sway conservative Mormon voters.

Cruz responded via Twitter shortly after: "Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought. #classless.”

On CNN, host Chris Cuomo asked the Texas senator if engaging with Trump was a good idea.

"The tweet he was unhappy about was not even a super PAC supporting me. It is an independent group. I don’t know them,” Cruz said. "When Donald gets scared, when he gets angry, when he gets threatened ... So last night Donald threatened my wife, he went directly after my wife."

Cruz also ratcheted up his pressure on John Kasich, who fared poorly in Tuesday's contests, to get out of the race, repeatedly calling the Ohio governor a “spoiler.”

"Facts are stubborn things. John Kasich is a good man, he's an honorable man but he has no path to the nomination,” Cruz said. “Right now Kasich's role is really being a spoiler.”

Kasich, who has no chance of amassing a majority of delegates in the Republican primary, is openly banking on a contested convention this summer.

Even that won't work, Cruz said, invoking the GOP's Rule 40, which says candidates must have won the majority of delegates in at least eight states to make the ballot in Cleveland.

"Kasich cannot even be voted on in the convention," Cruz said. "The only thing Kasich can do is what he's doing now, which is play the role of the spoiler."

[Politico]