I don’t know if this is a thing or not. I mean, it seems a little excessive to accuse Sen. Ted Cruz of having had five affairs. At first, I thought it was just confined to the National Enquirer making some salacious and unsubstantiated allegations, although they’ve broken real stories before. Then I saw that the whole thing had spilled over to CNN and was being openly discussed on the air by partisans of the Trump and Cruz campaigns. What was really noteworthy was that the Trump partisan accused the Cruz partisan of being one of Tailgunner Ted’s paramours.
Kate Bolduan, co-anchor of “At This Hour,” hosted a discussion between Amanda Carpenter, the former communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz, and Adriana Cohen, a Boston Herald columnist and Trump supporter.
Bolduan asked Cohen if she thought the two Republican presidential candidates should drop their increasingly personal and ugly feud over one another’s wives — when the conservative columnist redirected the conversation toward rumors of Cruz’s infidelity.
“Absolutely, I think we should move on,” Cohen said, “and where we should move to is the National Enquirer story that has reported that Ted Cruz has allegedly had affairs with at least five mistresses — including, you’ve been named, Amanda.”
Carpenter’s raised her eyebrows in shock, as Bolduan interrupted.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s moving on at all, Adriana,” she said, as Carpenter uttered a single sarcastic laugh.
Cohen said the Texas senator should issue a statement either denying the rumors or admitting they were true, and she again pointed out that Carpenter has been identified in the unconfirmed reports.
“You were named, Amanda,” Cohen said. “Will you denounce this story or will you confront it?”
Amanda Carpenter did deny the rumor and referred people to her lawyer.
Just when you think the Republican primaries can’t get any more disgraceful and brutal, we get this. For all I know, there is absolutely nothing to these rumors. But, if that’s the case, the story is how the Trump campaign is taking this smear campaign to eleven. Consider what Gabriel Sherman reported back in October when the Enquirer was accusing Ben Carson of brandishing his surgical scalpel “like a meat cleaver!”
Trump and Enquirer CEO David Pecker have been friends for years. “They’re very close,” said a source close to the Enquirer. In July 2013, Trump even tweeted that Pecker should become CEO of Time magazine, which at the time was being spun off from its corporate parent, Time Warner. “He’d make it exciting and win awards!”
It does reek of Roger Stone, don’t you think?
I miss the Weekly World News. Back in the 90s, I could count on standing in the supermarket check-out line and seeing headlines about Bat Boy, Satan emerging from oil wells, and best of all, Bill Clinton holding meetings with space aliens and JFK on the dark side of the moon.
Anyway, even if this were true, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference, because it would play directly into the whole warped sin-and-redemption narrative of evangelical Christianity. The evangelicals LOVE sinners. Without sinners, there would be nobody to forgive, and the whole hollow structure of evangelical Christianity would collapse.
Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. (Vitter did lose his gubernatorial bid.) DEMs shouldn’t get all high and mighty about when it works for a Republican because they do have their own little contrition, forgiveness history, complete with carrying a Bible and going to church.
In this case, are we sure Cruz would be available to answer that call a 2 am?
It’s not quite the same. Bill Clinton (for example) didn’t clutch at that ready-made “born again” narrative the way George W. Bush did with his years of coke-and-booze debauchery.
The liberal version is about shame and forgiveness, not their upside-down thinking about how the life of sin makes you more righteous.
IMHO the MSM should cover the Cruz story with the same intensity and repetition as they did “the scream” and the SBVT. The truth didn’t matter in those instances; so, they shouldn’t let the truth bother them on this one.
They’ve heard rumours about this for weeks, apparently. They are tangentially part of the story.
Here’s the argument against the story by an insider journalist.
Another great Sanders’ TV ad. (In this area Sanders has the best team. Beats the competition in this election cycle and most in the past few decades.)
Trump & Cruz supporters can both spell sex, doubtful either can tell you what a policy paper is and since polling pulled out the whopper that this gang approved of bombing a fictional land from Aladdin, sex shall hold them rapt.
Getting past the ugly visual of Cruz’s sex life, there’s the take that this is probably a good thing for his campaign.
LOL So true.
Any public reference to the candidate’s sexual organ is rarely good news, even by the candidate himself, but when the “horrifying mental image of [the candidate] removing his proboscis from his pleated jeans” is cited I think we can all fairly say it fails to humanise him.
Hey!!!
All’s fair in love and war, and politics is war.
Bet on it.
Is anyone really surprised at this? In a primary campaign where a (slightly veiled) discussion regarding the size of Trump’s dick opened a debate that occurred not even halfway to the convention?
Please!!!
It is what it is. Get used to it. What we must get our heads around is that this level of politics is what wins with the lower IQ portions of the
ejaculate…err, ahhh…sorry, I meanterectorate. Damn!!! “Electorate.” (Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart. My bad.)Wait’ll Trump
starts riding…oh shit, there I go again…gets on the(no, that won’t work either), starts referencing the Bill Clinton sex thing.HOO boy!!!
Watch.
Later…
AG
P.S. Churchill got it right.
So far…
Like dat.
Political discourse is simply treading the same path as has an uncensored internet. Lenny Bruce said regarding censorship in general:
Like dat, too. I agree wholeheartedly.
But where do you draw the line, and how do you enforce it once it has been drawn?
The great pianist and early TV-created celebrity Oscar Levant once said:
Yup.
We have erased the censorship line, and in the process of doing that we have also opened up the discussion of (and consumption of as well) sexual matters on the web…and thus in public…to lengths unprecedented in human history. Why act surprised when life imitates itself on other levels?
Llke I said…it is what it is.
Deal wid it.
Well, it’s come to this story that Mrs. Cruz was a [call girl https:/www.ncscooper.com/donald-trump-bombshell-ted-cruzs-wife-former-call-girl] by Trump.
Enough for me, I’m signing the petition that the Rep Convention should be open carry.
With a free bar…
And crack cocaine or amphetamines available in the restrooms as well.
Please!!!
Let loose the dogs of bore!!!
AG
Is up to 15k signatures and still climbing. The Right’s complete absence of irony and self-awareness has led to some amusing face-value responses. They just can’t help themselves.
Just when you think the Republican primaries can’t get any more disgraceful and brutal, we get this.
Is this all really worse than what Rove and Co. did to McCain in South Carolina circa 2000?
No, it’s not. If false, a good place to plant it because the National Enquirer has a reputation for getting it right on big stories like this. Would the Nat Enquirer trash it’s rep for this one? Possible, but it doesn’t have a 100% track record anyway and could probably shrug this one off with an oops.
One thing to watch out for with the Nat Enquirer, IMO, is that it plays on both sides of the street and only long after the fact are the political strings more apparent. In general, they go after GOP insiders/elites and DEM outsiders/non-elites. Hence, the Bush daughters and John Edwards and Jesse Jackson. (Note: the ownership change in 1999; so, anything before that would have a different political configuration.)
Said the lizard man,
“Drumpf you will not spill the beans/you lay off of my wife/you stop being mean. Attack me if you must/but let’s lay off our wives.”
Said the Drumpf, “how’s that girl that you have on the side?
Or should I say ‘girls’? I hear you have 5.”
Esquire
Billmon response tweet:
A bombshell like this that Villagers have been whispering about for weeks is deadly stuff. Stone knows exactly what he’s doing and that he’s quoted by name in the Enquirer article is a personal and confident touch which probably speaks volumes to the right people on credibility. Even ratf*ckers have a ‘brand’ and Stone’s is a sudden-death head-butt. Not saying the stories are always true, just effective.
Villagers/MSM will whisper for decades as long as no publication goes first. Taking it from rumor to fact requires work and money and gossip is free.
Exactly right.
And the right words from the right people — even the targets of the investigation — will shut them right up. The editors of the New York Times were asked by the white house to bury the Yellow Cake story “since it will affect the election” (if I’m remembering right) and they blithely went ahead and buried it.
James Reston asked Kissinger (over dinner, I think) if there was anything to the Watergate story and Kissinger assured him that there wasn’t, so the Times dropped it.
(I may be a little fast and loose on the details of both of these; corrections welcome.)
But this was not a little ‘thing’:
Months and months. Then not two days after the ‘establishment’ reluctantly comes around to supporting Cruz as the last man standing and boom, someone drops the shoe. Someone with a fine sense of timing.
For months and months, anti-Cruz operatives have pitched a variety of #CruzSexScandal stories
Operative words here are anti-Cruz operatives. Tainted source without proof = pass.
This wasn’t the story that I was hoping for to take Cruz down. My fantasy was that someone cracked the Canadian birth story and that it wasn’t merely an omission that his parents didn’t register it with the consulate but because they intended to remain in Canada as citizens.
You seem to be still seeking to prove or disprove the actual story. In this post-truth campaign the actual merits of the accusation seem almost an afterthought, if not a matter of opinion.
This is trial by hashtag. In the vaporous depths of the Right when has the actual truth ever stood a chance? Even if the media did the unimaginable and performed on act of journalism disproving all the allegations half of Republicans would probably cite that as damning evidence of the opposite.
I’m actually indifferent to whether it’s true or not. But if there’s no evidence it will quickly die and fall into that category of things that opponents dredge up every time a new GOP scandal hits and politically never hurt Cruz. Like the rumors of GHWB’s mistress and the pedophile ring in his WH. So far there’s not even a “she” saying something.
One of the most common responses to the story has been, “Ewww, impossible to imagine that five women would have sex with Cruz.” That would be my response as well until I stopped and acknowledged that in a weak moment women have been known to have engaged in sex with a man they’d otherwise not have given the time of day to.
Of course that’s true. I am just enjoying the sheer entertainment value of this, perhaps over much.
As for the common responses, one mistress might humanise Cruz, five is just creepy.
Doubt that any of them could be properly categorized as mistresses. More like a couple of rolls in the hay or shags. Plus, it would require authentic mistresses that aren’t Republicans to begin to humanize Cruz.
Why I don’t totally discount the story is that creepy and Cruz have long gone together:
Source: The Daily Beast
“…it would require authentic mistresses that aren’t Republicans to begin to humanize Cruz.”
Ouch! lol
It is Drudge, of all places, which remains completely silent on the subject. A difficult call for Matt?
Roger stone signs his work. In answer to Cruz’s signature complaint about the story:
Sigh. It’s like watching two Bond-villains in one movie.
Just for the record, in the aftermath of the Ashley-Madison hack last year:
Just interesting in hindsight.
That’s a good data point. It could also be the genesis of the rumors/gossip about Cruz. But on its own, it’s chump change compared to the Spitzer sting.
Yeah… Even if the Cruz story turns out to be totally fabricated it is still a work of art.
Work of art was Trump getting Cruz to call him a rat that he wouldn’t copulate with.
That was just a gift from the muses. Can’t ever say we weren’t warned.
And the birdie on Bernie’s podium today was another nice touch.
Was so sweet. And Good Friday too.
“The Environment endorses Bernie.”
Birdie Sanders Top Trending Hashtag
Made The Guardian — Call him Birdie Sanders: bird interrupts Oregon rally to thunderous applause
He changed up his speech for the Seattle Safeco Field rally. An amusing moment was right after his speech. As he walked down from his center field stage, he looked towards a receiving stand that had been seated behind him and immediately began striding towards those supporters. Suddenly, what appeared to be a dozen suits appeared and began running after him. They were none too soon in establishing their perimeter around Bernie at the reviewing stand. Doubt they expected a 74 year old man would be a challenge for them.
* Settles into lawn chair *
I’m rooting for injuries.
I’m going long on popcorn futures.
Popcorn might have peaked; I’m long metal detectors.
Did’t the founding fathers do this stuff in news papers?
Some with more literary imagination.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/54637/19-scathing-political-put-downs
A giod read, but none of those were founding fathers.
Jefferson did. And couple decades later, there was plenty about Jackson. So, if I (only minimally informed of that period) know of two instances, there must have been quite a bit more of it.
Jefferson and Adams….lol
Jefferson’s allies struck back with a rumor that Adams and a colleague had sexually consorted with four women during a trip to Britain. (Not bad for a hermaphrodite.) Adams answered that one: He joked that his colleague must have kept all four women for himself, “cheating me out of my two.”
It reeks of Roger Stone, Smokey the Bear hat and all:
The evangelical supporters which haven’t already bolted to Trump, he means.
But everyone may be missing the point; this isn’t about making Cruz unpopular with voters, it’s about making him high risk for the establishment as a Trump alternative. That’s what at stake right now; that’s what they were waiting for and it may be a smart and timely move. Apparently many of them already believed #thething, but were sitting on it. Let’s see.
Cruz: lol Kinda spikes his guns on the subject of extramarital sex and Goldman’s in the general. What’s he gonna talk about? BOARing taxes and Obamacare? End-Timers aren’t numerous enough.
As sure as I was back in 2013 that Cruz was making an insurgent and credible bid for the nomination I have never understood his strategy for winning the general election. His purist conservative and Dominionist shtick just doesn’t fly in constituencies where the necessary electoral votes are found.
I’m convinced the establishment believes Cruz loses too but also figures his defeat minimises down-ticket losses compared with Trump’s. They’ve already chucked in the towel.
Who knew the Republican nomination race would end up R-rated?
And it ain’t over yet.