Rep. Trey Gowdy unloaded on Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in a new video designed to boost Sen. Marco Rubio, R.-Fla., in the homestretch of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary.
“Run on your record,” Gowdy said, without naming Cruz, in a video taped on Rubio’s campaign bus. “But don’t mislead my fellow South Carolinians with fake Facebook postings, ads that can’t even withstand FCC scrutiny, and then photoshopping pictures. Come on, you’re better than that.”
Rubio and GOP front-runner Donald Trump have been portraying Cruz as a liar since the night of the Iowa caucuses, when his campaign suggested that Ben Carson was dropping out of the presidential race. Gowdy’s denunciations could be particularly damaging to Cruz, given that his prominence as the chairman of the committee investigating the Benghazi attacks and that he represents the upstate South Carolina region that usually boosts conservative and evangelical candidates.
A Facebook post purporting to be written by Gowdy, claiming that the South Carolina Republican was switching his endorsement from Rubio to Cruz, has been the lynchpin of the attacks on Cruz’s integrity in South Carolina. The message was posted on a community page called “Trey Gowdy Prayers” that has been operating for months.
Gowdy responded by attacking “Cruz and his allies” for working “to spread false information and outright lies” during the campaign. But the Cruz campaign denounced the Facebook post and suggested that Gowdy was being dishonest. “This is called a smear campaign, and it’s beneath the dignity of a sitting member of the House of Representatives,” Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said. “Does the Marco Rubio campaign really believe it’s going to smear it’s way to victory?”
To drive home Gowdy’s opposition to Cruz, the Rubio team held a conference call with Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who has served with Gowdy on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “It’s a pattern of personal destruction and it’s rooted in falsehood,” Chaffetz said. “To attack someone personally such as Trey Gowdy is ill-advised and intolerable for those of us who know these people.”
The Rubio team allowed that they don’t have any evidence that Cruz had anything to do with the fake Facebook post, though. “We don’t know whether the Cruz campaign specifically was behind this Facebook post or not,” said Rubio senior advisor Todd Harris. “What we do know is that there is a culture of dishonesty that goes from top-to-bottom in the Cruz campaign where telling lies is not only tolerated but seems to be encouraged. And so when you create a culture that puts no premium on the truth, this is the result of it.”
