Trump: I hope the National Enquirer, which often gets things right, is wrong about Ted Cruz, who is a liar.

Trump has released a statement about The National Enquirer’s allegation, which may or may not have come from Trump himself, that Cruz has had extramarital affairs with at least five women. 

It is, in many ways, a masterful example of the Trump statement. There’s a winking gesture toward political convention (I hope that these horrible allegations are not true), while the majority of the text not only serves to remind the reader of the allegations made by the Enquirer, but hints that those allegations very well may be true. Trump’s feint—I hope they’re not true—feels weirdly genuine in this context. Trump doesn’t care whether or not these allegations are true, because he’s going to exploit them for maximum political gain. He even used a new custom URL shortener to add “LyinTED” to the link to his statement!