Ted Cruz Sex Scandal: Donald Trump Accused Of Planting Story As Serious Doubts Arise About Cruz’s Alleged Affairs

The Ted Cruz sex scandal story just took another twist, with Cruz blaming Donald Trump for allegedly planting the story that ran last week and serious doubts arising over whether any of it is actually true.

The National Enquirer story accused Cruz of cheating on his wife, Heidi, with as many as five mistresses. The women were not named in the story but were quickly identified through their blurred out pictures and details of the alleged affairs.

Cruz immediately denounced the story as untrue — as have some of the women identified as his mistresses — and now Cruz is going on the offensive against Donald Trump. Cruz has accused Trump of planting the story, noting that the only named source in the story is a former aide to Donald Trump

CNN recounted Cruz’s accusations.

“Cruz suggested that Roger Stone, a former aide to Trump, and David Pecker, CEO of the National Enquirer’s parent company, had been in cahoots, pushing an item he has repeatedly denied and denounced as ‘garbage.'”

“‘The story, on its face, quoted one person on the record: Roger Stone,’ Cruz said during a CNN town hall event in Wisconsin. ‘Roger Stone has been Donald Trump’s chief political adviser. He planned and ran his presidential campaign and he’s been his hatchet man — he’s spent 40 years as a hatchet man. But not only that, the head of the National Enquirer, a guy named David Pecker, is good friends with Donald Trump.'”

There are serious doubts being raised about the Ted Cruz sex scandal story, with several media outlets poking holes in the Enquirer’s story. The Huffington Post found that rumors of Cruz’s alleged scandal stretch back for months, but there appears to be no basis for much of it.

“One journalist, Texas Monthly senior editor Erica Grieder, said she’d heard the rumors for months. She tweeted Friday that a reporter from a different tabloid outlet asked her in January about the rumor involving Cruz and the Texas-based Pierson. She found the rumor — that the pair had sex in a closet at a Republican event — to be dubious. ‘If the controversial Cruz had snuck off with the controversial [Pierson] at a public event in 2012, I’d have heard about it, years ago,’ she tweeted.”

Donald Trump has come under increasing fire for his role not only in the Ted Cruz sex scandal, but also for a very public spat regarding the candidates’ wives. After an anti-Trump PAC ran an ad in Utah showing Trump’s wife, Melania, in a nude modeling shoot, Trump accused Cruz of being behind it.

Though Cruz denied involvement and denounced the ad, Trump continued on the attack and re-tweeted an unflattering image of Tex Cruz’s wife, Heidi, side-by-side with Melania.

"@Don_Vito_08: "A picture is worth a thousand words" @realDonaldTrump #LyingTed #NeverCruz @MELANIATRUMP pic.twitter.com/5bvVEwMVF8"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2016

In his swing into Wisconsin this week, Donald Trump was taken to task by influential radio host Charlie Sykes, who tried several times to get Trump to declare wives and families off-limits.

“You know, wouldn’t it be a good way to start off your Wisconsin campaign by saying that wives should be off limits, and apologize for mocking [Heidi Cruz’s] looks?” the Radio 620 WTMJ host asked Trump.

But Trump reasserted his belief that Ted Cruz was behind the ad, an excuse Sykes wasn’t buying.

“So is this your standard — if the supporter of a candidate and not the candidate himself does something despicable, then it’s OK for you personally, the candidate for president of the United States, to behave in that same way?” Sykes responded. “I mean, I expect that from a 12-year-old bully on the playground, not somebody wanting the office held by Abraham Lincoln.”

Trump was later called out by CNN host Anderson Cooper during a town hall discussion. When Trump complained that he “didn’t start it,” Cooper took him to task.

“Sir, with all due respect, that’s the argument of a 5-year-old,” Cooper shot back. “The argument of a 5-year-old is ‘He started it.'”

For all the headlines it’s gotten, the alleged sex scandal isn’t hurting Ted Cruz too much at the polls. Recent polling shows that he is surging ahead of Trump in the key state of Wisconsin and now holds a roughly 10-point lead heading into next Tuesday’s primary.

[Picture by Scott Olson/Getty Images]