Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz fired his communications director Rick Tyler on Monday afternoon at a campaign event in Nevada for posting a video that falsely depicted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) dismissing the Bible.
The action came after Tyler posted a subtitled cellphone video on Facebook of Rubio walking by a Cruz staffer and Cruz's father Rafael, who were reading the Bible in a hotel lobby. The misleading subtitles show Rubio telling the staff that there aren't "many answers" in the Bible, which Rubio and his staffers condemned as a "dirty trick," according to ABC News.
Tyler deleted the video and apologized for it late Sunday, saying he posted it in haste and shouldn't have done so.
"I've apologized to Marco Rubio. I apologized to the campaign and I posted that on my Facebook and also shared it on Twitter and I'm saying it here. It was a mistake and I would not knowingly post something that I knew to be false but you're right. The judgment about what he said was wrong and so I apologize about that," he said, according to Fox News.
However, Cruz didn't think an apology was enough for the egregious crime of questioning another candidate's faith, deciding to call on Tyler to resign.
"Rick Tyler's a good man. This was a grave error of judgment," Cruz said during the Nevada event. "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."
He then refocused his efforts on attacking Rubio: "I understand that Marco's campaign team believes it's politically advantageous to try to distract the topic from his own record. And they have a long record they've earned in South Carolina of engaging in this kind of trickery and impugning whoever their opponent is to distract the attention."
Despite the move to remove Tyler, the damage to Cruz's campaign was already done, which both Rubio and front-runner Donald Trump took advantage of, according to Reuters.
"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 said as he spoke to reporters in Las Vegas.
Trump, not missing a beat, also piled on the assault, saying, "Wow, Ted Cruz falsely suggested Marco Rubio mocked the Bible and was just forced to fire his Communications Director. More dirty tricks!"
"Ted Cruz has now apologized to Marco Rubio and Ben Carson for fraud and dirty tricks. No wonder he has lost Evangelical support!," continued Trump, who has derided Cruz for failing to capture the support of evangelical Christians in South Carolina like was expected.
This development comes at a terrible time for Cruz, especially with the Nevada primary Tuesday evening and Super Tuesday coming next week. After entering South Carolina rivaling Trump for a first place finish or a comfortable second place standing but finishing third behind Rubio, Cruz can ill afford to lose more ground to Rubio before taking on Trump.
