Q from @HallieJackson: Is Trump going to apologize to Ted & Heidi Cruz at dinner tonight?
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 8, 2017
Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald Trump delighted in using Twitter to attack his Republican rivals and — in some cases — their loved ones. Like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose wife Heidi Cruz inexplicably became one of the eventual party nominee and president’s chief targets. Trump insulted her looks on more than one occasion, and even went on a tirade about how he would “spill the beans” on her supposed secrets. The senator called the real estate mogul a “sniveling coward” and demanded he stop, but seeing as how Trump won and Cruz didn’t, we already knows how this story ends.
Fast forward to Wednesday, March 8, 2017 — otherwise celebrated as International Women’s Day — when Press Secretary Sean Spicer faced a pertinent question from NBC’s Hallie Jackson about the president’s upcoming dinner with the Cruz family. “I’m curious about this meeting with Sen. Cruz tonight,” she said. “I’m wondering if the president has any plans to apologize to [Heidi Cruz] for the insinuations he made on the campaign trail.”
Spicer’s response? To pretty much complete ignore Jackson’s specific question and instead regurgitate any available information he had about Trump’s previous meetings with former campaign rivals and forthcoming meetings with other politicians and politicos:
“I think they’re looking forward to a great dinner. He’s had… He had dinner with the Rubios a couple days ago, maybe a week ago. He had lunch yesterday with [Sen. Lindsey Graham]. This is, as I stated weeks ago… The president is going to continue to have outreach to members of Congress from both parties. He’s meeting with [Congressman Elijah Cummings] today. This is a president who wants to engage with both sides of the aisle in both houses.”
Aside from the fact that none of the persons Spicer named were women, Trump’s press secretary pretty much refused to acknowledge Jackson’s pointed question about Heidi Cruz. And considering the particular day the former GOP spokesperson chose to avoid the matter altogether (and his boss’s previous tweets about it), it’s almost like watching Ted Cruz accidentally elbow his wife in the face again on national television.
(Via MSNBC)