Cruz Is a What? Trump Revels in Supporter's Insult

He repeats her slam that rival is a 'pussy'
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 9, 2016 9:22 AM CST

It's not every candidate's rally that would prompt CNN to add this editor's note above its print coverage: "This story contains language that some people might find offensive." The candidate, though, is Donald Trump, and the language in question is the word "pussy"—an insult that Trump directed at Ted Cruz, although he did so indirectly and in classic Trump fashion. As the Hill explains, Trump was speaking to a New Hampshire crowd Monday when he criticized Cruz for having reservations about waterboarding. At that point, a woman in the audience shouted something, and Trump stopped his speech. "She just said a terrible thing," he said in mock criticism. "You know what she said? Shout it out, 'cause I don't want to," he continued. "OK, you're not allowed to say—and I never expect to hear that from you again—she said ... he's a pussy."

The crowd loved it as Trump threw up his hands in feigned derision. "What kind of people do I have here," he asked. Tuesday morning, Trump's spokeswoman defended the exchange as Trump "exercising his free speech" and having a little fun with the crowd, while a Cruz spokeswoman says "there are certain words and certain phrases that are just not suitable for running for president." At New York, Annie Lowrey sees a larger point at play. The moment "felt like an apotheosis," she writes. "Perhaps no other event in the extended piece of performance art that has been the 2016 Republican primary has so perfectly encapsulated Trump’s magnetism and psychosis, his appeal and his incoherence, his brilliance and his terribleness. In it lies the key to his success, in New Hampshire and beyond. And in it lies the key to his likely failure as a politician." Her full explanation is here. (More Donald Trump 2016 stories.)

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