Well, it’s been a rough week for America’s most conservative presidential candidate. Ted Cruz lost South Carolina not only to The Donald, but also to Marco Rubio who seems to be riding the proverbial wave. Perhaps that’s why Senator Cruz has taken such swift actions to plug the leaks in his campaign, largely created by his national spokesman, Rick Tyler. Now, according to CNN, it’s former national spokesman, Rick Tyler.
Rick Tyler was representing Cruz when he blurbed an as-it-turned-out false story describing Donald Trump’s-ahem- liberal defense of eminent domain. When on The O’Reilly Factor on January 22nd, Tyler helped himself to a little creative indulgence in a story about Trump forcing a little old lady- a widow even- out of her house to facilitate building limousine driveways for an Atlantic City casino. It couldn’t have been any more of a compelling example of mean old Trump if Tyler fabricated it. Which he did. Unfortunately for Tyler, no one ever lost their home.
Tyler had to rescind the accusation but it was Cruz who looked foolish and took the real hit. One would think either Cruz would have learned his lesson and put the guy permanently on the Pizza Hut account and away from a microphone or Tyler would have thought to double check facts before he did his job.
Nope.
Now, thanks to The Daily Pennsylvanian, a student paper of the University of Pennsylvania, Tyler once again opened his big mouth. This time, the intended victim was Cruz’s other South Carolina rival, Marco Rubio. The Daily Pennsylvanian reported a casual hotel lobby meeting between Senator Rubio and a Cruz staffer. Senator Rubio noticed the staffer was reading the Bible and commented on the book.
https://youtu.be/V4s6CU-88l8
Originally, the video included subtitles, which misquoted Rubio (the subtitles have since been removed by The Daily Pennsylvanian with an explanation). Basically, the subtitles indicated that when Senator Rubio noticed the staffer was reading the Bible, he stated “there aren’t many answers in there”. Enter Rick Tyler. He jumped all over the implication that Senator Rubio was throwing the Bible all under the bus, which should offend conservatives- especially South Carolina social conservatives- to no end. Wouldn’t such hypocrisy from Marco send you fleeing to Ted Cruz’s campaign?
Unfortunately for Rick Tyler- and more so for Ted Cruz- Tyler once again forgot that pesky “fact checking” step. Instead of checking the authenticity of the subtitles by, I dunno, listening to what was actually said as opposed to just flying off the handle based on someone else’s subtitles, Tyler spread the bad video around like a prostitute with chlamydia. Now, once again, Rick Tyler had to apologize- this time with an extensive Facebook post- for convoluting his candidate’s campaign and dinging Ted Cruz’s integrity instead of the intended targets.
According to CNN’s report from earlier this evening, that seems to be enough for Ted Cruz to stomach. And not a minute too soon. According to the CNN report, Tyler was about to go back on air on MSNBC’s The Kate Show. He apparently got the hook only minutes before they went live.
Just think what damage he could have done with a few unfiltered minutes on MSNBC?!
