Bubba, I am sure that you are not as dense as you are pretending that you are. Cruz didn't say anything negative about the ad until 2 days later after the voting was over. That was more than tacit approval. In addition I believe it was confirmed in another thread here that GQ, the owner of the photos of Melania sold the rights to Cruz's campaign manager shortly before the ad was run. If that doesn't prove coordination between the PAC and the Cruz campaign I don't know what does.
None of this actually matters however so don't sweat it. Most people do not seem to be aware of how National Enquirer milks one of these stories. First they come out with a teaser that is short on details. They then let the hapless politician make a big deal out of it and increase the public’s interest. Then they release a little more the next week which creates more turmoil and more free publicity. Then they let a little more out the week after that and so on, and so on. It is an excruciating process that sells a lot of thin weekly newsprint magazines for $5 a piece.
The first issue in this series barely sold more than their average, the second in the series will sell a lot more, the third more than the second, etc. etc... If they released all the details in the first issue they wouldn't sell a tenth as many magazines. Take a look at how the John Edwards thing played out, or Gary Hart, or Jessie Jackson, or Herman Cain or etc. etc... The National Enquirer may run a lot of freaky stories but they haven't got a political sex scandal wrong in the last 30 years. Milking the most from a sex scandal is an art form that they have perfected over the decades. But this is going to take months to play out completely, because they don't care about the primary, the candidates or the country, they just want to sell papers.
Well, the internet is learning. Every blogger with dreams of having a paycheck from ad space and the hits to make it is out there pumping the same rumors, with the same thin and watery justification.
Trump's pal Packer who runs the media group which NE is part of knows this game, it's red meat for him.
Cruz said the ad wasn't one of theirs, within hours. He didn't call a YUUUGE press conference and jump up and down, or beat his fist on the podium or threaten to have supporters punch out anyone, he just said it wasn't their ad.
If you had to decry things which were not your actions and go into histrionics over it so the drama minded reality/MTV generation would find you credible, for just one day's worth of world events, you'd have a long and exhausting week. No one feels the need to go to such lengths over things they didn't do. But let's say he went through the apparently required dose of drama driven theater and vehemently deplored the ad, would people have said 'he's trying too hard, so it must be his"?
What is the proper time frame and level of visible outrage--because those theatrics don't play in a courtroom--and that is where Cruz punched his ticket, in front of the SCOTUS, not on the frothing at the mouth streets of (F**K You Buddy! I'm walking here!) New York.
So, what's the standard? Is there a requisite X minutes to respond with Y decibels of outrage (real or not), jumping a minimum of Z inches high in a histrionic display of distaste for something you didn't do that would satisfy the critics?
No, we know there isn't. We know the global gossip industry is making out like a fat rat during all this, and Liberals aren't just making political hay of the allegations, they're getting effing rich, too.
Nope. Never confirmed. That claim was started right here at FreeRepublic. I have yet to see anything supporting it other than a tweet which does nothing more than state the claim.
Several people here have pointed this out already, yet Trump supporters here continue to falsely offer this claim as having been substantiated.