Trump, Cruz spar over North Carolina transgender 'bathroom law'

The latest Donald Trump-Ted Cruz dust-up: North Carolina's new "bathroom law"

Trump began Thursday by criticizing the law that targets transgender people, saying legislators in the Tar Heel State should have left well enough alone.

"There had been very few complaints the way it is," Trump said on NBC's Today show. "People go — they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate. There has been so little trouble."

Cruz later told backers in Maryland that Trump's position on the bathroom is another reason social conservatives should not trust him.

"He thought that men should be able to go into the girls' bathrooms if they want to," Cruz said. "Grown adult men — strangers— should not be alone in a bathroom with little girls. And that's not conservative. That's not Republican or Democrat. That's basic common sense."

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The Cruz campaign launched an ad Thursday echoing those remarks and concluding, "Donald Trump won't take on the PC police. He's one of them."

The North Carolina law — designed to block a Charlotte non-discrimination ordinance that in part allowed transgender people to use bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with — has prompted calls for an economic boycott of the state.

On the Today show, Trump said he didn't know whether he has transgender employees — "I probably do" — and said yes when asked whether he would allow Caitlyn Jenner to use any bathroom she wanted in Trump Tower.

"That is correct," Trump said.