Ted Cruz’s national spokesman apologized late Sunday for a video distributed by the campaign that falsely depicted Marco Rubio dismissing the Bible.
“I want to apologize to Senator Marco Rubio for posting an inaccurate story about him here earlier today,” Rick Tyler, the spokesman, wrote in a Facebook post.
The latest dust-up comes as the two senators’ campaigns have been clashing heatedly for days about “dishonesty” and “lies” on the trail.
The story mentioned by Tyler was about a video that shows Rubio walking into a hotel lobby past Cruz’s father Rafael and a staffer reading the Bible, and subtitles in the video misquote Rubio as saying, “Got a good book there, not many answers in it.”
In a corrected version of the video tweeted by Rubio’s communications director, Alex Conant, the subtitles quote Rubio saying, “Got a good book there, all the answers are in there.”
Rubio himself explained to reporters Monday that he was saying the Book of Proverbs is especially helpful.
“I know exactly what I said to that young man. I said, ‘The answer to every question you’ll ever have is in that book,’ and then I pointed to the Book of Proverbs, which he was reading, and then I said ‘Particularly that one,” Rubio told reporters in Nevada.
Tyler continued, “Since the audio was unclear, I should not have assumed the story was correct. 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. I regret that mistake.”
Rubio said he accepts Tyler’s apology, but called for the Cruz campaign to hold someone accountable.
“It’s every single day, something comes out of the Cruz campaign that’s deceptive and untrue, and in this case goes after my faith. So I understand, I guess one of their spokespersons apologized and I’ll accept his apology, but this is a pattern now and I think we’re now at a point where we start asking about accountability,” Rubio said.
The flub by the Cruz campaign comes after Rubio narrowly defeated Cruz for second place behind Donald Trump in the South Carolina primary Saturday. In the heated contest there, the Cruz campaign was repeatedly accused by both Rubio and Trump for being dishonest and engaging in dirty tactics.
In one incident, the Cruz campaign used an altered photo on an anti-Rubio website showing a smiling Rubio shaking President Barack Obama’s hand, which was featured on a page about the “Rubio-Obama Trade Pact,” accusing Rubio of casting the crucial vote to pass the Trade Promotion Authority bill in the Senate to give Obama authority to negotiate trade deals more quickly. Rubio aide Todd Harris called the photo “deceitful” in a gaggle with reporters where he distributed a printout of the page.
The Cruz campaign later changed the photo, but said it was obviously photoshopped and not an issue. They have fought back at the repeated accusations of dishonesty from the Rubio camp by saying the senator is “screaming liar” in the face of his record and spreading its own rumors.
