Ted Cruz Fires Campaign Spokesman Rick Tyler

After he spread a false story about a GOP rival, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz announced Monday that he was firing his national spokesman Rick Tyler.

“This morning, I asked for Rick Tyler’s resignation,” Cruz announced in a press conference. “I had made clear in this campaign, that we will conduct this campaign with the very highest standards of integrity. That is how we have conducted it since day one.”

.@tedcruz has asked his national spokesman to resign over an ‘inaccurate’ @marcorubio video https://t.co/IW4CLyhI1b https://t.co/ckDL70sJg9

— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) February 22, 2016

On Sunday, Tyler was widely criticized after he shared an student article on Twitter and Facebook claiming that Marco Rubio trashed the Bible in front of a Cruz campaign staffer and Ted’s father Rafael Cruz. Had Tyler consulted the Cruz staffer beforehand, he would have learned that the video’s subtitles were incorrect, and that Rubio was actually praising the Bible.

Tyler deleted the posts on social media after the mistake was pointed out. In a Monday morning Facebook post, he officially apologized to Rubio. Neither, it appears, were enough to save his job.

The decision was apparently as much a shock to Tyler as it was the rest of the world. NBC’s Katy Tur reported that Tyler was just about to do a TV hit on MSNBC when he abruptly left.

[Image via screengrab]
——
>>Follow Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) on Twitter

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!