Rubio: Photo of Handshake with Obama is Fake
COSTELLO: If you thought the battle between the GOP candidates was heating up, the political punches, they just keep on coming. Senator Marco Rubio now accusing rival Ted Cruz's campaign of posting a fake picture online -- there it is -- that shows Rubio shaking President Obama's hand. It's on a Web site called The Real Rubio Record -- a Cruz campaign site intended to paint Rubio as the, quote, "Republican Obama". Phil Mattingly has more on this. He's on the trail of Rubio in Greenville. Good morning.</s>PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. The Rubio campaign is urgently trying to get the message out about this Web site. Now, they look at this photo and they say according to senior advisor Todd Harris, Rubio doesn't own that suit, he doesn't own that tie, he doesn't own that watch. This is a fake photo being circulated on a Web site paid for by Cruz's campaign. Now look, Carol, Web sites created to attack candidates is not a new thing in politics. Just about every party committee does it. A number of candidates do it as well. What the Rubio campaign is seeing on this though is an opening to continue to attack Cruz on deception, on dishonesty -- a theme for the campaign really since Saturday's debate in South Carolina. Now, Ted Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler told our colleague Sunlen Serfaty that he didn't believe that the campaign would use any fake photos and then quickly tried to spin it himself saying that the Rubio campaign is the one using smears and lies and said quote, "This is pathetic this late in the campaign to be doing this." Carol, obviously, as you know and we've seen over the last week, this battle between these two campaigns and even Donald Trump coming in and calling Ted Cruz a liar is only heating up as the race gets closer to when voters actually get to go to the polls. This is not going away any time soon. I think you're going to hear a lot from the Rubio campaign on this going forward.</s>COSTELLO: Although it may seem a little silly that we're all fighting about a picture showing Marco Rubio shaking hands with the President of the United States. We must hearken back to Chris Christie, right, who hugged President Obama when he came to the state of New Jersey to offer financial aid to that state, and Chris Christie could never recover from that image.</s>MATTINGLY: Every single time, Chris Christie seemed to talk about Sandy somebody seemed to bring up the hug. And it should be noted that he said over and over during his campaign in New Hampshire before he dropped out of the race, that he did not in fact hug President Obama. It was just a bad photo. But look, another kind of interesting element to the photo of Marco Rubio shaking -- allegedly shaking President Obama's hand, it it's a left-handed handshake which isn't exactly the norm in society that we've seen here. I think the Rubio campaign clearly they want to push back on this Web site. It's kind of a detailed attack on all of Marco Rubio's positions paid for by the Cruz campaign. But again Carol, they also like that this easily fits into the narrative of the attacks the Cruz campaign has been leveling at Marco Rubio and they're going to try and exploit this I think over the next couple of days -- Carol.</s>COSTELLO: All right. Phil Mattingly -- thanks so much. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the saga of a lost wallet sparks lots of laughter in New York City. You'll want to see this story next.