Republican Chris McDaniel sought Monday to gain traction in a special election for Senate in Mississippi by firing a top political adviser because he has been sharply critical of President Trump.

But Rick Tyler, the Republican political operative let go by the McDaniel campaign, was a known Trump critic when McDaniel hired him. Tyler, who served as a spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz during the Texas Republican's 2016 presidential bid, has regularly criticized the president since joining MSNBC as a political commentator in February of that year, after being let go by the Cruz campaign.

So the high-profile firing — McDaniel issued a press release to the national press corps on Monday morning — fostered speculation that the candidate was struggling to break through in his bid against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., appointed by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant to succeed Republican Thad Cochran, who resigned his Senate seat earlier this year two years before his term was up.

"Why he thinks it’s a good idea to put out a formal press release stating he’s fired his Never Trump campaign consultant is hard to understand. He's having a rough year," said a Republican operative supporting Hyde-Smith. "The national money appears to have dried up for McDaniel."

Neither McDaniel nor Hyde-Smith had released their second quarter fundraising figures. But Republicans in Washington, rooting for the appointed incumbent to defeat McDaniel in the special election set to be held on the same day in November as the midterm elections, are confident that she is on track to advance to a run-off, where she would be the favorite to defeat Democratic candidate Mike Espy.

Republican insiders have been concerned that McDaniel could be vulnerable to Espy. The conservative has a history of making provocative statements. He was previously courted by Steve Bannon, the populist provocateur then running Breitbart News, to challenge Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., in the GOP primary. McDaniel briefly entered that contest before switching to the special election. By then, Bannon and Trump were estranged.

In 2014, McDaniel came close to ousting Cochran in the Republican primary, winning round one by a hair and narrowly losing the runoff. McDaniel had the support of grassroots conservatives in that race, but the same magic has yet to materialize this year. Hurting his chances are past negative statements he has made regarding Trump and his agenda — he backed Cruz in the presidential primary.

That could be why he felt compelled to burnish his Trump credentials with the very public firing of Tyler. Below is the press release his campaign issued, in full:

As previously reported, the McDaniel campaign engaged Rick Tyler as a communications strategist. Tyler is a well-known conservative, having worked for the presidential campaigns of both Newt Gingrich and Ted Cruz. Today, however, Tyler and the McDaniel campaign have mutually agreed to part ways over a fundamental disagreement on supporting President Trump and his agenda. Senator McDaniel is a loyal and longtime supporter of President Trump, and is wholeheartedly committed to his Make America Great Again agenda. Tyler, in his role as an MSNBC political analyst, has been and continues to be an outspoken critic of the President. Because of this, it has been mutually agreed upon that it is in the best interest of the campaign and Mr. Tyler to go their separate ways.

McDaniel also has tried to compensate for his inconsistency in regard to his support for Trump by attacking Hyde-Smith as a former Democrat, which she is, who supported Hillary Clinton when she first ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. The attacks might fall flat, given that Trump is himself a former Democrat who had chummy relations with Clinton before he ran against her in 2016.