Ted Cruz asked his campaign communications manager Rick Tyler to resign on Monday, after Tyler presumably committed some kind of reprehensible, salacious offense. Actually, nah.
Tyler was fired after the campaign circulated an improperly subtitled video of an encounter between Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael, and a Cruz campaign staffer. The video shows the staffer and the elder Cruz reading the Bible; as Rubio walks by the pair, he says something, which the video subtitled to read, “Got a good book there, not many answers in it.”
Rubio’s communications director Alex Conant tweeted another version of the video on Sunday—this time correctly subtitled, to show Rubio saying, “Got a good book there, all the answers are in there.”
Sorry, but Jesus Christ, who cares?
“I’ve spent this morning investigating what happened,” Cruz said to reporters in Las Vegas. “And this morning, I asked for Rick Tyler’s resignation. I have made clear in this campaign that we will conduct this campaign with the very highest standards of integrity.”
Tyler had already posted an apology to his Facebook page by Sunday evening:
“I want to apologize to Senator Marco Rubio for posting an inaccurate story about him earlier today. The story misquoted a remark the Senator made to the staffer. I assumed wrongly that the story was correct. According to the Cruz staffer, the Senator made a friendly and appropriate remark.”
“Since the audio was unclear, I should not have assumed the story was correct,” he continued. “I’ve deleted the post because I would not knowingly post a false story. But the fact remains that I did post it when I should have checked its accuracy first.”
According to CNN reporter Teddy Schleifer, a Rubio spokesperson responded with a solid burn:
“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. 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.”
The whole stupid, boring scandal is cast in a particularly stupid, boring light when one considers that the leading Republican candidate’s campaign is essentially based on the strategy of throwing insults and racial epithets at a dart board and seeing what sticks.
Perhaps the Cruz Crew thought that the move would win them points with evangelical Christians—by far Cruz’s largest, most important base. The thing is, South Carolina evangelicals seem to like rude, theologically illiterate Donald Trump significantly more than they like pious, evil Cruz.
But okay, if this is the minor skeezy incident you want to turn into a thing, go with God.
TL;DR? Read Donald Trump’s recap of the controversy. Honestly, that dude should start a blog.
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Image via Getty.
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