A political action committee is pushing back against claims that Ted Cruz’s team was behind the idea of purchasing the rights to a picture of Melania Trump from a 2000 GQ photo shoot, and said the Texas senator’s campaign was in no way involved in the PAC’s use of her likeness in an anti-Donald Trump attack ad.
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“First, the Cruz campaign had nothing to do with this ad whatsoever. We didn’t get the image or the idea for the ad from them,” Make America Awesome PAC’s founder, GOP strategist Liz Mair, told the Washington Examiner’s media desk Tuesday.
“Second, as GQ itself has noted, Donald Trump had the spread containing this exact shot done by GQ in the first place in order to further his political career and his presidential campaign, and apparently, no one — including Trump and his wife — has objected to the image the ad uses being spread all over the Internet long before we ever conceived of the ad,” she added.
Make America Awesome targeted female voters in Utah this month with a Facebook ad featuring a nude picture of Melania. Text superimposed over the image read, “Meet Melania Trump. Your next first lady. Or you could support Cruz on Tuesday.”
The ad included a disclaimer at the bottom that said, “Not authorized by any candidate or candidate committee.”
Trump went on to lose the Utah Republican primary to Cruz, and later launched a series of attacks on the senator and his wife, Heidi Cruz.
The PAC, which is not affiliated with Cruz, was launched with the purpose of blocking Trump from becoming the GOP nominee. Nevertheless, Trump has repeated several times that Cruz’s campaign was behind the ad, and the real estate mogul alleged this week that the senator’s team even purchased the rights to the GQ photo.
“From what I hear, he and his campaign went out and bought the cover shoot. Melania did a cover story for ‘GQ,’ a very strong modeling picture. No big deal,” the GOP candidate told ABC News.
He has not produced any proof of this claim.
Mair maintained that she has no idea what Trump is talking about.
“Donald Trump is in full-grade meltdown mode about this ad, which, when combined with his insane attacks on Heidi Cruz, has caused his supporters to sour on him, big time,” she said.
“So it’s no surprise he’s trying to change the story by trying to get political reporters to write treatises about intellectual property law, not exactly hot clickbait like stories about the ad itself, and making absurd allegations about the Cruz campaign somehow being involved in our acquisition of the image, production of the ad, etc., etc.,” she added.
Cruz’s spokeswoman responded this week to Trump’s claim that the senator purchased the rights to the photo of Melania, and characterized the charge as absurd.
“Of course we haven’t and Trump knows it,” Catherine Frasier told the Hill. “But [it’s] part and parcel for the sleazy, dishonest campaign he is running.”
