How do I know that? Well, I know that if such a political action committee were to coordinate with Cruz — say, by running an ad at his behest — it would be a federal crime. I know a presidential candidate purposefully violating federal law is almost certainly not worth the risk. I know that Cruz was going to win Utah anyway, by a wide margin, so violating federal law to win with 70 percent of the vote versus 65 percent is a particularly dumb idea…

What’s frustrating about this particular scenario, though, is that it’s not just Trump who’s conflating Cruz with the super PAC that ran the ad. (A super PAC, mind you, that can be taken at face value when it says that its priority is less Cruz’s being the nominee than Trump’s not being the nominee.) It’s a common conflation among television pundits, too.