Cruz Spox Defends Campaign’s ‘Dirty Tricks’

BRZEZINSKI: “So, you have been tracking this. You guys are confident. You guys won. I have to ask, what with the allegations of, I guess I’ll have to say that in quotes, of ‘dirty tricks.’ The mailers that really seem totally off color in terms of how to win. And also the — the sort of putting it out there that Ben Carson had dropped out. With your top surrogate even tweeting it. Why do that?”
TYLER: “Well, for one, the mailer was — it was modeled after the Iowa Republican party mailer that got so many Republicans elected in the last cycle and it was very successful. It was one of many tools we used to persuade people. What I like to tell people is three days ago, I was in an Uber car and the guy told me that he wasn’t going to caucus. I said if you were going to caucus who would you caucus for. He said Ted Cruz. And so I spent the rest of the trip trying to guilt him into caucusing. And he promise me by the end that was going to caucus.”
BREZINSKI: “Wasn’t the mailer — hold on. The mailer, wasn’t it very deceptive. I mean, wouldn’t you consider that dirty politics if that was done to your candidate?”
TYLER: “I could show you lots of mailers that people — that I would consider deceptive. But this was reminding people that it was their obligation and duty to vote. These are people who normally don’t vote that we think would vote for Ted Cruz. And we believe — through the follow-up calls we got a lot of these people to say they would vote for Ted Cruz. On the Ben Carson allegation — it’s just false. We simply as a campaign, repeated what Ben Carson had said in his own words. He said after Iowa he was going back to Florida for a couple of days then he was going to go to D.C. to the prayer breakfast. And what that told us, it was he was not going to New Hampshire. That was not a dirty trick. That was really surprising by a campaign that was once leading in Iowa saying he’s not going to come to New Hampshire. I mean, that’s a news item.”