Iowa Republican caucus winner Ted Cruz on Tuesday apologized to fellow candidate GOP presidential Ben Carson for spreading a rumor that the former neurosurgeon had dropped out of the race.
“Last night when our political team saw the CNN post saying that Dr. Carson was not carrying on to New Hampshire and South Carolina, our campaign updated grassroots leaders just as we would with any breaking news story,” Cruz said in a statement.
{mosads}”That’s fair game. What the team then should have done was send around the follow-up statement from the Carson campaign clarifying that he was indeed staying in the race when that came out.
“This was a mistake from our end, and for that I apologize to Dr. Carson.”
CNN had reported that Carson was planning on going home to Florida after Monday night’s caucuses, which the Cruz campaign misinterpreted as a report that he was dropping out of the race.
Carson said in a statement that he was going home to “get a fresh set of clothes.”
The retired neurosurgeon slammed the Cruz camp for “deceptive and destructive practices.”
“For months, my campaign has survived the lies and dirty tricks from my opponents who profess to detest the games of the political class, but in reality are masters of it,” he said in a statement.
Earlier Tuesday, a Cruz campaign spokesman denied any wrongdoing.
“On the Ben Carson allegation, it’s just false,” Rick Tyler, the Cruz campaign’s communications director, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“We simply as a campaign repeated what Ben Carson had said in his own words,” he continued. “That’s not a dirty trick.”