US race down to lady and the Trump

DONALD Trump and his main challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, Ted Cruz, have escalated their bitter feud, taking to social media to clash over two unlikely figures – their wives.

An anti-Trump political group unveiled a controversial campaign advert ahead of Tuesday’s votes in Arizona and Utah that uses a photograph of Trump’s wife, Melania, lying provocatively in his custom-fitted jet, naked and handcuffed to a briefcase.

“Meet Melania Trump, your next first lady,” read the online ad, posted on Facebook by the group Make America Awesome.

“Or, you could support Ted Cruz on Tuesday.”

Melania Trump, 45, is a Slovenian-American jewellery designer and former model.

The use of the image, from a GQ magazine photo shoot in 2000 when she was Melania Knauss and not yet married to Trump, angered the billionaire real estate magnate, who made his own veiled threat about Cruz’s wife, Heidi, in a tweet late on Tuesday.

“Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a GQ shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!” Trump posted to his seven million Twitter followers.

Cruz wasted no time firing back. “Pic of your wife not from us,” he tweeted. “Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought. #classless.”

The suggestive ad was apparently part of an effort to sway voters in predominantly Mormon Utah, according to The New York Times.

Cruz comfortably won Utah and Trump finished third behind Ohio governor John Kasich. Trump easily won Arizona in the day’s other Republican contest.

Heidi Cruz, 43, has taken leave from her investment banker job at Goldman Sachs to hit the campaign trail with her husband.

She dismissed Trump’s threat, saying she was “not worried”.

“You probably know that most of the things Donald Trump says have no basis in reality,” she told reporters in Wisconsin.