Cruz Communication Director Fired After Falsely Claiming Rubio Dissed the Bible

By Al Perrotta Published on February 23, 2016

Fresh off the furor over the Cruz campaign faking a photo of Marco Rubio with President Obama, the campaign’s communication director, Rick Tyler, retweeted a video that put words in Rubio’s mouth, words that made it sound like Rubio was insulting the Bible. Tyler apologized for the misleading retweet, but it was apparently too little too late. Cruz told reporters Monday afternoon that he has asked for Tyler’s resignation.

On Sunday, Tyler linked to a video from the Daily Pennsylvanian that shows Rubio walking by Cruz’s father, Rafael, and Cruz staffer Christian Collins in the lobby of a Hampton Inn. Collins is reading a Bible. Rubio says something to the men. According to the subtitles, Rubio says, “Got a good book there, not many answers in it. Especially in that one.”

But that’s apparently not at all what Rubio said. In fact, according to one person who was there, he said the opposite: “All the answers are in there.”

Rubio’s communications director Alex Conant called Tyler’s tweet “another dirty trick by the Cruz campaign” and tweeted out the video with what he says are the accurate subtitles.

Tyler apologized Sunday in a long Facebook posting, and repeated his mea culpa Monday on Fox News. “I posted in haste, I should not have done it,” Tyler told Martha MacCallum, “It was a mistake and I would not knowingly post something I knew to be false.”

In his Facebook apology, Tyler says, “I assumed wrongly that the story was correct.” He then says, “According to the Cruz staffer, the Senator made a friendly and appropriate remark.” So, in even the best possible interpretation, Tyler did not bother to check with an eyewitness on his own staff before posting a damning allegation against Rubio. We would also have to believe that Tyler truly assumed that a faithful Catholic, whose faith is a major aspect of his campaign, would rip the Bible in front of an evangelical preacher who is the father of his rival.

This is only the latest worrisome incident involving the Cruz campaign. Last week, the Cruz campaign posted a photoshopped image of a starstruck Marco Rubio shaking hands with Obama, on a site dedicated to caricaturing Rubio as “the Republican Obama.” Tyler’s first reaction was to deny the campaign would ever use a fake image. Obama Rubio fake - 900Then the campaign essentially said “everybody does it” before pulling the image from the site.

Before this there was the Cruz campaign spreading the unconfirmed CNN story suggesting that Ben Carson appeared to be dropping out right in the middle of the Iowa caucuses, and spreading the story without bothering to check with the Carson campaign first. Carson is still steaming about that one.

Ted Cruz has apologized publicly to Carson and arranged a meeting with Carson Thursday night to try to smooth things over. The meeting did not end well, according to the Carson campaign, with Carson saying the two disagreed on “accountability and culpability,” and with Carson accusing the Cruz campaign of leaking the meeting to the press to make Cruz look good. Carson reiterated on Fox News Saturday that he thinks Cruz should have fired the guilty parties involved in the Iowa incident. “You don’t just accept it and say, ‘Well, it’s okay,'” Carson said.

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