Ted Cruz sacked his top aide communications director Rick Tyler on Monday after he promoted a false story questioning Marco Rubio's commitment to the Bible, a move the Texas senator described as "a grave error".
Rick Tyler, a longtime Republican operative, and communications director to the Cruz campaign shared on social media a video this week that wrongly suggested Rubio had made a negative comment about the Bible.
Although the audio was fuzzy, some assumed Rubio to have remarked: "Got a good book there, not many answers in it." In fact, Rubio had said "all the answers in it".
The conservative blog was later updated to correct the error and Tyler later said in an apology to Rubio, "Since the audio was unclear, I should not have assumed the story was correct. I've deleted the post because I would not knowingly post a false story."
Ted Cruz, however, finds that apologizing is not enough and asked for Tyler's resignation.
"Rick Tyler's a good man. This was a grave error of judgment," Cruz said this afternoon. "But I'll tell you even if it was true, we are not a campaign that's going to question the faith of another candidate. Even if it were true, our campaign should not have sent it. That's why I've asked for Rick Tyler's resignation because the standards of conduct in this campaign have been made absolutely clear for every member of the campaign."
Marco Rubio accepted Cruz apology but wants someone to be accountable for it and that these dirty tricks were becoming a pattern.
"This campaign now has repeatedly done things that they have to apologize for, and no one is ever held accountable. Who's going to be held accountable for making up this video, who is going to be held accountable for lying about Ben Carson? Who was held accountable for the robocalls, and who was held accountable for the commercials on television that they had to pull down?" Rubio went on, referring to several shady tactics the Cruz campaign has been linked to in recent weeks.
Campaign manager Jeff Roe confirmed that Tyler had formally resigned.
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