UNDER THE BUS

Ted Cruz Fires Top Spokesman

Rick Tyler canned over spreading false Rubio info.

Ted Cruz announced Monday during a Nevada press conference that he has called for his campaign's communications director Rick Tyler to resign.

The firing comes after Tyler spread a video on social media falsely accusing rival candidate Marco Rubio of mocking the Bible to Cruz's father and a Cruz staffer. After being corrected by several witnesses to the incident, who noted that Rubio was in fact praising the Bible, Tyler deleted his posts and apologized.

"I had made clear in this campaign that we will conduct this campaign with the very highest standards of integrity," Cruz explained. "When other campaigns attack us personally, impugn my integrity or my character, I don't respond in kind. None of you have heard me throw the kind of insults at Marco Rubio that he throws at me every single day. If other candidates choose to go into the gutter, we will not do the same. Rick Tyler's a good man. This was a grave error of judgment. It turned out the news story he sent around was false, but I'll tell you, even if it was true, we are not a campaign that is going to question the faith of another candidate."

Tyler was reportedly supposed to go live on MSNBC and abruptly left when this news broke.

Rubio's communications director Alex Conant praised Tyler but reserved no niceties for Cruz. "Rick is a really good spokesman who had the unenviable task of working for a candidate willing to do or say anything to get elected," Conant emailed The Daily Beast. "There is a culture in the Cruz campaign, from top to bottom, that no lie is too big and no trick too dirty. Rick did the right thing by apologizing to Marco. It's high time for Ted Cruz to do the right thing and stop the lies."

—Gideon Resnick

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Gideon ResnickPolitical Reporter

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