Twitter erupted with the hashtag #CruzSexScandal.

To a casual observer, false claims of Cruz’s “5 Secret Mistresses!” might have seemed to sink his ship. But a new poll reveals millennials definitively favor Cruz over Trump or Clinton.

“These smears are completely false, they’re offensive to Heidi and I, they’re offensive to our daughters… Donald Trump’s consistently disgraceful behavior is beneath the office [of President],” Cruz responded last Friday.

He is right.

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

The Enquirer story came out shortly after an ad sponsored by an independent PAC called Make America Awesome, run by Liz Mair. The ad—unapproved or paid for by Ted Cruz—showed Trump’s wife Melania modeling in the nude for a G.Q. spread.

Millennials were unswayed by the titillating PAC ad or slanderous Enquirer story. What was disturbing to millennials, who value transparency, was Trump’s reaction to the ad. Because his reaction was identical to Hillary Clinton’s reaction to a certain stained navy blue dress: tell lies and call names.

Today I’ll share my personal experience with Heidi, and then expose key facts about the Enquirer’s slanderous story so you can see why millions of young people are tuning into Cruz and tuning out Trump.

Hearing Heidi

On a hot and humid day in Texas last summer, I heard Heidi Cruz speak for the first time. Back then, I was rooting for a candidate other than her husband, so she had an uphill battle in earning my ear. But after 20 minutes of listening to her explain Ted’s passion for the Constitution and detail his specific policy plans with unassuming grace and poise—I couldn’t help respect her. Authentic. Astute. All-American. Clearly an all-star.

“What will be your focus as first lady?” a member of the audience asked. Heidi answered, without hesitation, that her focus will be promoting entrepreneurship.

The mother and businesswoman with a Harvard MBA went on to recall being a young girl whose parents (a dentist and former dental hygienist) brought her along with them to third world countries to provide dental care to those in need. She also told how her parents inspired her and her brother to run their own bread-making business.

“It definitely taught us the value of hard work. We were used to being highly productive at all times. We got kind of competitive with each other. We probably made 200 loaves a week,” Heidi told the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Heidi’s answer of focusing on entrepreneurship as first lady resonated with me. And I’m no outlier. According to a recent Deloitte study, some 70 percent of millennials aspire to be entrepreneurs someday. Meanwhile, our dreams of independence are being crushed—as President Barack Obama’s radical regulations make it historically difficult for us to find even a job at minimum wage—much less start a business and pay others minimum wage.

It’s also no wonder the latest poll says we millennials are rallying around her husband, whose tax plan has been shown by The National Center for Policy Analysis and the Beacon Hill Institute to create more jobs and economic growth than Trump’s plan.

Roger Stone Throws Invisible Stones

An invisible stone won’t break your bones, but those are the kind that Roger Stone, a longtime chum and advisor of Trump, throws. The only on-the record source in the Enquirer story mentioned at the top of this piece is Roger Stone.

As recently as last summer, Stone himself confirmed to the New York Times that he was “a friend” of Trump’s and planned to “keep beating the drum for him… until he is in the White House.”

Last Wednesday, Trump threw a fit on Twitter, claiming “Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad.” Within hours of Trump’s tantrum, the Enquirer had a story up about Ted’s five alleged affairs. It’s no mystery how such a slanderous story slithered into print.

Stone undoubtedly concocted the juicy piece with David Pecker, the Enquirer’s CEO who just so happens to be “a very close friend” of Trump. And if there is any doubt about Pecker’s affection for Trump, the tabloid actually endorsed Trump in early March. It was Trump’s first “major publication” endorsement. That is, if you consider the Enquirer to be a major publication.

Smart Women Are Rising Up

Millennial women have a hard time rallying around Hillary Clinton now that they know she stood by and watched while her hubbie Slick Willie sexually abused young women working for him on the campaign trail and in the White House.

Millennials were very young during the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. But in 2014, when former Clinton intern Monica Lewinsky started speaking out, they were old enough to listen. And they heard Lewinsky tell Vanity Fair how “troubled” she was by Hillary’s knee-jerk reaction to “blame the woman” rather than concede that her husband was a sexual predator of a girl young enough to be his daughter. Hillary resorted to name-calling to protect her own political career. Indeed, Lewinsky said that if “narcissistic loony toon” had been “the worst thing she [Hillary] said, I should be so lucky.”

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, accompanied by his wife Heidi and their two daughters Catherine, 4, right, and Caroline, 7, center, waves to members of the audience after speaking at a rally at the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center in Waterloo, Iowa, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Smart women—be they Megyn Kelly, Carly Fiorina or Heidi Cruz—intimidate Trump as much as they intimidated Hillary so many years ago. But he knows he can’t fight them the way Hillary does—by calling names—because he’s a gentleman. Oh. Wait.

For Heidi Cruz—a bright and kind woman for whom even Donald Trump can’t conjure up a vile name—he resorts to the only alternative he knows: calling her husband a name. “Lyin’ Ted!” “Cheater!” “Nasty!”

Trump is the same person he was two years ago when he bellowed: “I like Ted Cruz so much.” The only thing that’s changed is that Cruz is crushing him in many polls—especially among millennials.

“I will be the best thing that ever happened to women,” Trump boasts on the campaign trail.

As a millennial woman—on behalf of the majority of millennials and 70 percent of women who agree with me—I beg to differ.

We know, Mr. Trump, that a female millennial reporter who attended your rally was physically assaulted and you responded by defending her assailant. We know you’ve said partial-birth abortion counts as female healthcare. We know you sling mud at women who merely question your pugilistic style; women whose faces you dislike; and women whose husbands threaten to outpace you in politics. We don’t trust you. We do know you love polls. And today we challenge you to read the polls. You’ll find that we do trust Ted.

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Katie Kieffer is the author of the book, Let Me Be Clear, published by Random House. She has appeared on FOX News, FOX Business, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, The Bill Maher Show, GBTV and she is a frequent public speaker. Find her at KatieKieffer.com.