GOP front-runner Donald Trump, during an
often-contentious interview with conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes in Wisconsin Monday, refused to say if he'd apologize for a retweet mocking the looks of Ted Cruz's wife Heidi, and said he "didn't even know it was a bad picture" of her.
Instead, he countered, during an interview with Sykes, who as a talk show host on WTMJ in Milwaukee is a member of the #NeverTrump movement and supports Cruz, that he was hitting back at Cruz, blaming him for an online ad featuring a provocative photo of his wife, Melania.
"He knew totally about that," Trump said of Cruz. "If he didn't know about that, it would be a totally different thing."
The ad was posted by the anti-Trump super PAC Make America Awesome, which is not affiliated with Cruz, and Sykes, used that to press Trump on the issue.
"So is this your standard?" he asked Trump. "That if a supporter of another candidate, not the candidate himself, does something despicable, it's okay for you personally, the candidate for president of the United States, to behave in that same way? I mean, I expect that from a 12-year-old bully on the playground, not somebody who wants the office once owned by Abraham Lincoln."
Trump, though, said it was a "retweet by somebody else" and that he "didn't even necessarily know it was a bad picture" of Cruz's wife, and refused to accept Cruz's contention that he was not behind the nude photo advertisement featuring his rival's wife.
"Is Ted Cruz going to apologize for starting it and sending out that photograph?" said Trump.
And when Sykes asked him if he ever apologizes, Trump said he does believe in it, he would "think about apologizing, he owes me an apology, because what he did was wrong. He sent out a picture to people in Utah."
The arguments between Sykes and Trump reached further than just about their wives, however.
He also blamed Time Magazine for his criticisms of Gov. Scott Walker's reforms in Wisconsin, telling Sykes that he had just repeated
what the magazine had written, in March 2011, when he told Fox New's Bill O'Reilly that Walker was "too unyielding" in his dealings with the state's unions.
Also during the interview, Sykes at one point scolded the front-runner for sounding like a "12-year-old bully on the playground" than a candidate for president.
Wisconsin conservatives reacted with glee on Twitter to the contentious interview:
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