• March 28, 2024

Shaking It Up To Save Campaign: Ted Cruz Fires Communications Director

Ted Cruz finally getting the hint about his campaign staff as he fired his communications director today. For someone with so much potential and momentum, it’s just sophomoric to have these kinds of mistakes coming from top level staffers.

FOX News: Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Monday he’s fired campaign communications director Rick Tyler, after his top spokesman promoted a video that wrongly depicted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as trash-talking the Bible.

The Texas senator announced that he’s asked for the resignation at a press conference Monday afternoon.

“We are not a campaign that is going to question the faith of another candidate. Even if it was true, our campaign should not have sent it. That’s why I’ve asked for Rick Tyler’s resignation,” Cruz said. “The standards of conduct in this campaign have been made absolutely clear.”

Tyler originally had linked to a story showing a video of Rubio walking by a Cruz staffer and Cruz’s father Rafael, who were reading the Bible in a hotel lobby. The original subtitles on the video showed Rubio saying to the staffer, “Got a good book there, not many answers in it.”

But after Tyler linked to the story, Rubio communications director Alex Conant tweeted out the same video with what he says are the correct subtitles — and they tell a very different story.

In them, Rubio actually says of the Bible, “All the answers are in there.”

Conant called the move “another dirty trick” by the Cruz campaign.

Tyler told Fox News on Monday that he made a mistake.

“I posted in haste, I should not have done it,” Tyler told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum. “It was a mistake and I would not knowingly post something I knew to be false.”

Tyler also apologized Sunday on Facebook, noting the Cruz staffer in the video said Rubio made a “friendly and appropriate remark.” (The source of the original report, The Daily Pennsylvanian, has nevertheless stuck by its original transcript of Rubio’s remarks.)

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