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Sen. Ted Cruz addresses more than 1,600 delegates at the North Dakota Republican Convention in Fargo, North Dakota, on Saturday, April 2. | AP Photo Trump spokeswoman: 'The Bush people' are running Cruz's campaign

Donald Trump’s campaign tried out a new attack line against Ted Cruz on Wednesday morning: He’s a tool of the Bush family.

Following a bruising defeat in Wisconsin on Tuesday, the Trump campaign suggested the Republican front-runner faced an uphill battle against the establishment and slammed Cruz, calling the Texas senator “worse than a puppet--- he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump.”

By Wednesday morning, the Trump campaign was arguing that Cruz’s campaign is being run by the party establishment, particularly the Bush family, and that should neither Trump nor Cruz secure 1,237 delegates before the convention, they could both get duped out of the nomination.

“The Bush people are now running Sen. Cruz’s campaign — Neil Bush, who’s spent millions of dollars invested with Common Core, and all of these other special interest groups like Goldman Sachs, like hedge fund managers,” Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson told Fox News, referring to Jeb Bush’s brother, who joined Cruz’s finance team last month. “This is going to be a very serious problem if Sen. Cruz continues to go down this path and then neither Trump or Cruz becomes the nominee.”

Trump would have to win 494 more delegates to secure the nomination outright before the convention. But if he and Cruz both fall short of 1,237, Pierson insisted the establishment will tweak the convention rules so that neither candidate emerges as the nominee.

“If it does go to a contested convention, which it very well may not, you will see a lot of the rules changing again, because that is how the establishment blocks the people’s choice,” Pierson said. “They’ve admitted it. They’re not hiding it.”

Pierson added that “many in the establishment” have made clear that they don’t intend to support Cruz at an open convention, pointing to Republicans who are simply supporting him as the best alternative to Trump in the primary as an example.

“When you have the establishment backing you so reluctantly to the point to where you have people endorsing you that said that you would get murdered on the Senate floor and nobody would care and the difference between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz is being stabbed or shot, their loyalty is not with Sen. Cruz,” she said, referring to past statements from South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who subsequently backed Cruz. “However, Sen. Cruz has now made himself that Trojan horse to push this to a contested convention, of which where the GOP and the RNC have no intention of supporting either one of them.”