His dismissal comes as Cruz battles a well-earned reputation for being a little too cavalier with the truth. The final straw came this weekend when Tyler shared a blog post and video purportedly showing Marco Rubio making fun of a Cruz staffer for reading the Bible. In actuality, the video was of a fairly benign encounter that was incorrectly subtitled to make it seem nefarious. Tyler apologized, but it wasn’t enough to save his job.
Donald Trump wasted no time making hay out of it:
Wow, Ted Cruz falsely suggested Marco Rubio mocked the Bible and was just forced to fire his Communications Director. More dirty tricks!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2016
Tyler is a longtime communications star in conservative circles, working as Newt Gingrich’s press secretary during his ill-fated 2012 campaign. You may remember him from this legendary quote he gave The Huffington Post, which referred to the literati’s “minions” and included the line, “But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich...”