Students at the University of South Carolina hold a rally and news conference at the state Capitol to protest a controversial bill that would ban transgender people from choosing the bathroom they use, on April 13, in Columbia, S.C. | AP Photo Transgender bathroom battle rocks Republican race Cruz pounces after Trump suggests transgender people should be able to use whatever bathroom they want.

For weeks, North Carolina's new law banning transgender people from using the facilities of their choice barely registered as an issue in the Republican presidential race. On Thursday, a single answer by the party front-runner, coupled with the firing of a high-profile sports personality over an incendiary social media post, put the issue front and center.

"Oh, I had a feeling that question was going to come up," Donald Trump said during a lengthy segment on NBC's "Today."


"I will tell you. North Carolina did something that was very strong. And they're paying a big price. There's a lot of problems," Trump observed, saying that he agreed with remarks from a commentator he did not name who said North Carolina should leave its laws as they are.

Alluding to businesses that have left the state or canceled plans to expand, Trump called it reason enough to "leave it the way it is."

"There have been very few complaints the way it is. People go. They use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate," Trump said. "There has been so little trouble. And the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic — I mean, the economic punishment that they're taking."

Sensing an opening, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz addressed the North Carolina law, first on surrogate Glenn Beck's radio show on Thursday and then at a rally, characterizing Trump as someone who wants grown adult male strangers allowed in the same private facilities as "little girls." And then, his campaign fired out a statement with a transcript of Cruz's comments on Beck's show, topped with more choice words for Trump.

"Donald Trump is no different from politically correct leftist elites. Today, he joined them in calling for grown men to be allowed to use little girls’ public restrooms. As the dad of young daughters, I dread what this will mean for our daughters — and for our sisters and our wives. It is a reckless policy that will endanger our loved ones," Cruz said in the statement, going on to say that "Donald stands up for this irresponsible policy while at the same time caving in on defending individual freedoms and religious liberty."

Trump, Cruz averred, "has succumbed to the Left's agenda, which is to force Americans to leave God out of public life while paying lip service to false tolerance."

"This is not real tolerance. The Left wants to force its belief system onto Americans across the country and silence people of faith in the public square," Cruz wrote. "Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump is all too eager to join them. This simply confirms that the same man who favored partial-birth abortion and still supports public funding for Planned Parenthood will sacrifice principle on the altar of political correctness. Trump will not defeat political correctness. Today he bowed to it."

Critics have derided the law, signed last month by Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, as the "bathroom bill," in part because it restricts people from using restrooms or locker room facilities that do not correspond to their gender at birth.

A spokesman for McCrory's reelection campaign reiterated that the state "was getting along fine before the Charlotte City Council passed its unneeded and overreaching ordinance," referring to the municipal law struck down by the state legislation.

"Where the governor disagrees with Mr. Trump is that bathroom and shower facilities in our schools should be kept separate and special accommodations made when needed," McCrory campaign spokesman Ricky Diaz said, adding, "It's just common sense."

ESPN fired on-air personality and former All-Star pitcher Curt Schilling on Wednesday after he shared an inflammatory post on social media that appeared to criticize opponents of such legislation. The post featured a man wearing a wig and ill-fitting clothing cut to reveal his chest. (The posting was only the most recent incident. Last year, the network suspended Schilling for the remainder of the Major League Baseball regular season after he shared a post comparing Muslims to Nazis.)

On Beck's show, Cruz tore into ESPN for canning Schilling "for making the rather obvious point that we shouldn’t allow grown male adult strangers alone in a bathroom with little girls. That’s a point anyone who is rational should understand.”

Beck said: "We always hear from the left on gun control that if it will save just one person, then we should do it. If this would just save one little girl from being molested by a heterosexual pervert, we should do it."

Cruz, who served as Texas solicitor general from 2003 to 2008, said he spent time dealing with cases and "people who are repulsive perverts and criminals."

"There are some bad people in the world, and we shouldn’t be facilitating putting little girls alone in a bathroom with grown adult men," Cruz continued. "That is just a bad, bad, bad idea."

Campaigning in Frederick, Maryland, later in the morning, Cruz asked his audience, "Have we gone stark-raving nuts? This is political correctness. This is basic common sense."

"Are there any parents of daughters here?" Cruz asked, as members of the audience raised their hands. "I'm the father of two little girls," he said. "Here is basic common sense: Grown adult men, strangers, should not be alone in a bathroom with little girls."

"And that's not conservative or liberal, that's not Republican or Democrat, that's basic common sense," Cruz said, to applause.

Referring to when Trump previously said he could be the most "politically correct person," Cruz explained, "I guess he's showing us what that looks like."

"I am waiting with anticipation for the new baseball caps: Make PC Great Again," he said.

The Texas senator was hardly the first to criticize ESPN for firing Schilling.

"ESPN continues to screw up," Sarah Palin wrote in a Facebook post, sharing a political cartoon expressing a similar viewpoint to the meme shared by Schilling.

Despite his apparent opposition to that law, Trump said he did not know whether he has employed any transgender people with his company.

"I really don't know. I probably do. I really don't know," Trump said, going on to say, when asked, that he would allow transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner to use whatever bathroom she wanted at Trump Tower.

As a candidate last year, Lindsey Graham said he would "welcome" Jenner, who is a Republican, into his party. On Thursday, the South Carolina senator, who reluctantly endorsed Cruz, said allowing transgender people to use the bathroom they prefer and allowing grown men in the same facilities as little girls are not the same issue.

“Well, I think it would be a bad idea to put little girls in bathrooms with grown men. That’s different than the transgender issue, I guess," he said on CNN. "All I can say is that the only bathroom I can control is in my office, and you can use the bathroom in my office without bringing your birth certificate.”

Unprompted, Trump also remarked on "a big move to create new bathrooms."

"Problem with that is for transgender, that would be — first of all, I think that would be discriminatory in a certain way," Trump said. "That would be unbelievably expensive for businesses in the country. Leave it the way it is."

Brianna Ehley and Nolan D. McCaskill contributed to this report.