Some of the ugliest moments in the 2016 Republican nominating contest came when Donald Trump attacked Sen. Ted Cruz’s family. Trump baselessly suggested Cruz’s father might have participated in John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and he both attacked the appearance of Cruz’s wife and threatened to “spill the beans” on her.
Cruz’s response? To call Trump a “sniveling coward” and telling him to “leave Heidi the hell alone.”
“I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,” the Texas Republican added later at the Republican National Convention.
Cruz, of course, was soon supporting that same “sniveling coward” — and has done so for the past eight years. When it emerged recently that a Trump adviser was actually involved in planting the story about Cruz’s father in the National Enquirer, Cruz declined to re-litigate the issue.
Republican officeholders have spent the better part of a decade shrugging off Trump’s personal attacks and sidelining their pride in the name of being a team player. But on few counts has that been as pronounced as when he’s gone after family members.
Repeatedly this election cycle, Trump has invoked the spouses and family of Republicans who have criticized him. And repeatedly, those Republicans have stood by Trump because he’s the party’s standard-bearer.
The most recent example came this weekend in Georgia, when Trump made a point to attack not just Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) but also his wife, Marty.
Trump cited Marty Kemp having said recently that she isn’t planning to vote for Trump, even as her husband has come around to the party’s nominee.
“Now she says she won’t Endorse me, and is going to ‘write in Brian Kemp’s name,’” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Well, I don’t want her Endorsement, and I don’t want his.”
Trump added at a rally in Atlanta: “I haven’t earned her endorsement? I have nothing to do with her.”
The governor responded by echoing Cruz’s 2016 admonition, urging Trump in an X post to “leave my family out of it.”
But Kemp otherwise suggested he would still help Trump, saying, “My focus is on winning this November and saving our country from Kamala Harris and the Democrats.”
The pattern was also evident at last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where two former primary foes whose spouses Trump had criticized spoke on his behalf.
Trump during the primary campaign had suggestively pointed to the absence of Nikki Haley’s husband, Michael, who was in fact deployed to Africa as a member of the South Carolina National Guard at the time.
“Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away,” Trump said, adding: “What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone.”
Trump also said Michael Haley should “come back home to help save her [Haley’s] dying campaign.”
Haley responded at the time by saying, “Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander in chief.” But by last month, she used her convention speech to play up Trump’s foreign policy.
Trump also falsely accused Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) wife, Casey, of trying to “commit organized voter fraud” for comments she made about supporters from outside Iowa helping with her husband’s campaign there. His campaign cited the DeSantises’ “openly stated plot to rig the Caucus through fraud.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has also endorsed Trump despite Trump’s racist attacks on his wife, Taiwan-born former Trump administration transportation secretary Elaine Chao. Trump has also made repeated insinuations about the couple’s ties to China.
McConnell endorsed Trump in March. At the time, he was asked about Trump’s attacks on his wife and about the senator’s assertion that Trump was culpable for Jan. 6. McConnell simply repeated his past promise to support Trump if Trump won the nomination.
Former Texas land commissioner George P. Bush has supported Trump even after Trump’s attacks on his father (former Florida governor Jeb Bush) and his uncle (former president George W. Bush), as well as social media posts suggesting his mother’s Mexican heritage influenced Jeb Bush’s immigration policies.
Trump has made little secret of his propensity for attacking family members. He’s done it repeatedly with judges, prosecutors and others who run afoul of him. Less than a year before the assassination attempt against him, he made light of an attack that left former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) husband, Paul, with serious head injuries.
There are certainly gradations to Trump’s invocations of spouses; the attacks on Chao and Heidi Cruz are in a different ballpark than what Trump said about Michael Haley and Marty Kemp.
But few things demonstrate Trump’s domination of the Republican Party like the fact that he can go there and still maintain the support of these Republicans. And he appears increasingly intent upon driving that home.