Rubio on CNN report: ‘They just made it up’

Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio said Tuesday that CNN completely made up a report about his advisers telling him to consider getting out of the primary because he might get clobbered in his home state of Florida.

Speaking on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade and Friends” in an interview discovered by Buzzfeed, Rubio lashed out at CNN and called into question its sourcing.

{mosads}“It is just false,” Rubio. “They just made it up. There’s no other way to describe it other than the fact that they made it up.”

The Florida senator said the CNN report cited multiple anonymous sources said to be familiar with the thinking of most of his top advisers, but that when the reporter defended the story on air, she seemed to indicate there was only one source.

“In fact they have now gone back and said they have one source, not in the campaign, but someone who knows someone who knows someone,” Rubio said. “I mean, it is just crazy the things people make up these days. It’s not new that you see some other campaigns pushing that kind of stuff, but it is just patently false.”

“Look, I think it has been proven as false, not a single person has come out and said, ‘no, this is true, this is me who they were talking about’,” Rubio said. “I mean it is just false. Fortunately, we have press sources that allow us to get our word out.”

CNN is adamant that it has multiple sources within the Rubio campaign and is standing by its reporting.

The Rubio campaign has been in damage control ever since the story broke late Monday.

The campaign claims that CNN never reached out for comment. Rubio spokesman Alex Conant says he jumped into a car and sped across town to appear on the network to push back against the story after he heard about it on air.

Furthermore, the Rubio campaign claims that rival Ted Cruz is back to his “dirty tricks” for pushing the story to voters in an email. Cruz similarly came under fire after his campaign spread a false report about Ben Carson dropping out before the Iowa caucuses.

“It ain’t true, it is a lie, and unfortunately looks like Ted Cruz’s campaign is putting out emails in places like Hawaii, telling people about it, and you saw that with Ben Carson earlier,” Rubio said. “It’s just not true. We have a 151 delegates, my path at the end of the day is not essentially any different from his or anybody else’s. Right now no one has a clear path to the 1,237 delegates. It’s a very unique campaign, we’re not gonna run out of money and we’re not gonna run out of supporters.”

The story comes at a bad time for the Rubio, who faces a must-win contest in his home state.

According to the RealClearPolitics average, Donald Trump leads in Florida by 16 points.

To catch Trump, Rubio must minimize how much of the vote Cruz and John Kasich capture there.

“If you vote for Ted Cruz in Florida or you vote for John Kasich, you’re voting for Donald Trump,” Rubio said.

“If Donald Trump wins Florida then it starts looking like maybe you can’t stop him. That’s why it’s so important for everyone in Florida to vote for me, because I’m the only one who has a shot to stop him or beat him in Florida.”