Photoshopped Image of Rubio/Obama at Cruz-Sponsored Site Has Rubio Camp Fighting Mad

The Cruz camp is now saying it's "common practice" to use altered photos.

By The Stream Published on February 18, 2016

Marco Rubio’s campaign is expressing outrage over a photo on a Ted Cruz-sponsored website that shows Marco Rubio shaking hands with President Obama. The image, they say, is fake. Photoshopped. Rubio senior advisor Todd Harris says Rubio doesn’t even own the tie or watch he’s shown wearing. Perhaps even more damaging, the photo makes Rubio look like a star-struck kid meeting his favorite ballplayer.

Ted Cruz’s campaign spokesman Rick Tyler initially denied any photographic fishy business, telling CNN’s Teddy Schleifer, saying he hadn’t seen the photo, but “I am confident that our campaign would not use a photo that is not authentic.” Now Tyler is saying it’s “common practice” to use photoshopped images on websites. He didn’t stop there. Tyler told Hallie Jackson of NBC News that the Rubio camp’s fuss over the website are “piddly, petulant complaints that make them look weak.”

As the Rubio camp sees it, posting a bogus image fits how the Cruz people roll. “There is a culture of dishonesty from top to bottom in the Cruz for president campaign,” Harris told reporters Wednesday. “It is reflected in what Ted Cruz himself says, it’s reflected by phony Facebook pages that his supporters put up, it’s reflected by calls to Iowa voters saying Ben Carson dropped out. … And now the latest example is a completely invented photo of Marco Rubio attacking us for a position that Ted Cruz himself held a few short months ago.”

Harris is referencing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, which Obama negotiated and Rubio supports. Cruz dubs it “The Rubio-Obama Trade Pact.” In the past, Cruz himself supported TPP in theory, and granting the President Trade Promotion Authority (TPA). He even co-wrote an Wall Street Journal editorial in support of TPA. But Cruz withdrew support for the actual deal, saying in November, “I believe we can negotiate a much better agreement with a strong conservative president than we have with Barack Obama.” He told Breitbart, “TPA in this Congress has become enmeshed in corrupt Washington backroom dealings, along with serious concerns that it would open up the potential for sweeping changes in our laws that trade agreements do not typically include.”

Cruz’s anti-Rubio website, www.therealrubiorecord.com isn’t just tying Rubio to Obama with a handshake. Its home page shows a split-screen composite of Rubio and Obama’s faces, and virtually all the images of Rubio on the site are obviously photoshopped in pursuit of unified style. One page, for instance, describes Rubio as a puppet of the sugar lobby and shows an obviously altered image of Rubio in a tuxedo with doll arm hinges near the elbows. Nuanced the site is not. It concludes by declaring, “Rubio is the Republican Obama.” In between, it features attacks on Rubio over everything from immigration to marriage.

 

Rubio Obama - 700

 

Things are unlikely to grow friendlier between the two men any time soon. Rubio and Cruz are locked in a brutal battle for second place in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, and more broadly, the battle to be the “Not-Trump” GOP candidate. The RealClear Politics average for South Carolina has the two senators separated by only half a point, and some 12% of South Carolina voters remain undecided. Meaning, we’re looking at 48 hours of full-contact, cutthroat campaigning.

UPDATE: Naturally, it didn’t take long for people to begin studying the photoshopped image as if it were the Zapruder film. Jimmy Princeton googled “businessmen shaking hands,” and came up with this:

Here’s what the stock photo looks like reversed:

 

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