Supporters for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sit under an oversized ace of hearts playing card featuring Mr Trump (Photo: AFP)
Supporters for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sit under an oversized ace of hearts playing card featuring Mr Trump (Photo: AFP)
Republican presidential contender Ted Cruz has said he has asked his national spokesman to resign for a “grave error of judgement” in distributing a video that falsely suggested rival Marco Rubio was dismissive of the Bible.
The move comes befo-re the Republican caucuses in Nevada and as rival campaigns have piled on Mr Cruz for his alleged lies and “dirty tricks.”
Mr Cruz’s national spokesman Rick Tyler had shared on Facebo-ok a story from Univer-sity of Pennsylvania student newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian, which reported that Mr Rubio told a Cruz staf-fer reading the Bible that the holy book did “not have many answ-ers in it.” The story was accompanied by a video, though the audio was unclear. Mr Tyler later deleted the post and apologised to Mr Rubio for posting the “inaccurate” story.
The issue strikes to the heart of Mr Cruz’s support among evangelical Christians. The Texas Senator has also spoken openly about his own faith. “This was a grave error of judgement,” Mr Cruz said during a campaign event on Monday while also praising his spokesman as “a good man”.
“It turned out the news story he sent around was false. But I’ll tell you, even if it was true, we are not a campaign that is going to question the faith of another candidate. That’s why I’ve asked for Rick Tyler’s resignation,” Mr Cruz said.
Mr Rubio said he accepted the Cruz campaign’s apology, but called for more “accountability”. “It’s every single day something comes out of the Cruz campaign that’s deceptive and untrue,” Mr Rubio said, calling the Bible video “perhaps the most offensive” Cruz tactic to date because it questioned his faith.
Republicans Mr Rubio was looking to outpoll rival Mr Cruz in Nevada’s caucus on Tuesday to help bolster his position as the establishment favour-ite for his party’s nomination for the November 8 election.
Looming over the tight race between the two is Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who has won two of the first three state nominating contests and is expected to dominate the field in Nevada.
A recent CNN/ORC poll put Mr Trump ahead by 26 percentage points in Nevada at 45 per cent support, followed by Mr Rubio, from Florida, at 19 per cent and Mr Cruz, from Texas, at 17 per cent.
“They (Mr Cruz and Mr Rubio) are playing for second,” said Nevada political analyst Jon Ralston, adding: “It’ll be a Trump state.”
