Newt Gingrich was dismayed by Donald Trump’s recent attacks on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’s wife, calling the GOP frontrunner’s involvement in the spat “utterly stupid.”
“It has frankly weakened everything that Trump ought to be strengthening,” Gingrich said in a Monday night interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “It sent a signal to women that is negative at a time when his numbers with the women are already bad. It sent a signal of instability to people who are beginning to say, ‘OK, maybe I’ve gotta get used to it, maybe I’ve gotta rely on him, maybe he could be presidential,’ and frankly, it energized Cruz.”
Trump kicked the feud off last week by accusing the Cruz campaign of being behind an ad run by a pro-Cruz Super PAC that features a nearly nude photograph of Trump’s wife, Melania. He followed up by retweeting a supporter’s meme of an unflattering photograph of Cruz’s wife, Heidi, alongside a complimentary one of his own wife.
Cruz ardently condemned the attacks on his wife, calling his GOP rival a “sniveling coward” who is “intimidated by strong women.”
Like Cruz, Gingrich argued that candidate’s family members should be kept out of the campaign fray.
“He gets down into this mud that I think really has hurt him,” Gingrich told Hannity. “I’m not sure anybody in the Trump campaign understands yet what a big mistake this is, and they can’t keep doing this stuff and think they’re going to get the nomination.”
Gingrich has mostly offered words of praise for Trump’s campaign, writing in a January Washington Times op-ed that the New York real estate tycoon was a “genuine phenomenon.”
His criticism comes as Trump faces increasingly heavy scrutiny for his past disparaging remarks about women, sparked by an anti-Trump ad highlighting quotes from the candidate calling women “dogs” and “fat pig[s].”
Trump responded to these critiques on Monday, saying he “never thought he would run for office.”
