There are no primary contests this week but the top two Republican candidates, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are in the middle of a war of words. From tweets to tabloid stories, the fight is centered around the candidates’ wives. 

The feud has stretched from criticizing the character and appearance of the two candidates’ wives, to accusations of infidelity.

“We look at the campaigns getting very personal and very aggressive in this kind of attack,” said James Henson. The Director of The Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin, Henson said the back and forth doesn’t make either candidate look good.

Henson pointed to the attitude of women, who are likely to have a negative reaction to the turn in the campaigns. “Both Cruz and Trump already had pretty high negatives among women both in Texas and nationally, it’s hard it imagine this is going to help that,” Henson said.  

It probably won’t hurt Trump, Henson said, many of the businessman’s supporters like that he speaks his mind and doesn’t hold his tongue but Cruz has a  different voter-base. A staunch conservative, Cruz appeals to so-called “value-conservatives.” 

“I think it’s benefiting Cruz at this point, he looks like the wounded husband,” said David Butts, a veteran political consultant in Texas.

“I think they realized that if you bait Donald Trump, he will come after you,” Butts said. 

He compared Trump to a bull, “when you wave the red flag he wants to come trotting out there and charge and that’s what he did.”

The anti-Trump Super Pac, “Make America Awesome,” showed a nude photo of the billionaire’s wife, Melania Trump. The photo was taken of the former model for a spread in GQ magazine about 15 years ago, then the picture resurfaced in an TV commerical that aired in Utah last week. 

The caption read, “Meet Melania Trump. Your next First Lady. Or, you could support Ted Cruz on Tuesday.” 

Even though the Super Pac responsible for the ad is not affiliated with the Cruz campaign, Trump believes Cruz was behind the photo and the commercial. 

Trump took to Twitter to respond to the ad, he explained the origin of the photo and threatened, “Be careful, ‘Lyin’ Ted,’ or I will spill the beans on your wife.”

As a political consultant, Butts believes the Super Pac purposely provoked Trump and they got the reaction they wanted–Trump went after Cruz’s wife. 

“It was an unwise decision on Trump’s part, in my judgment, because it was Trump’s to win and he needs to be cautious,” Butts said.

Trump and Cruz exchanged tweets, one accusation followed by another denial on social media. The ‘Twitter war’ started Tuesday, the same day as the deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium.

Henson said many thought the attacks would force the candidates to leave the drama behind and  talk about counter-terrorism. Instead, Henson said, “We saw the campaigns going more quickly and maybe more thoroughly into the gutter in short order.” 

A story published in a tabloid magazine alleged Cruz has had affairs with multiple women. The Cruz campaign immediately denied report from the National Inquirer and pointed the finger at Trump. Cruz accused Trump of planting the tabloid story in an attempt to tarnish his reputation and hurt his campaign.  

Cruz said Trump is “scared” and that’s why he’s lashed out. Cruz said, “With this pattern he should not be surprised to see people call him ‘Sleazy Donald.’”

Trump denied any involvement with the article and claimed Cruz is the one who started the feud. 

The hard personal attacks are nothing new in elections, especially at the presidential level but Henson said all the nicknames and the accusations redirect people’s attention away from the candidates’ political policies. 

“This fight involving the wives and the National Inquirer story, is being broadly and I think rightly interpreted as a successful effort by the Trump campaign,” Henson said the drama is a distraction to divert focus away from “a couple of bad that the Trump campaign had on foreign policy stories.”

The political consultants agree the only way to know how this feud really impacts Cruz and Trump is to see what the voters say during the primaries next week.