WASHINGTON — President Trump has poured more fuel on the Iowa caucus fire — tweeting that “nobody knows who the real winner is” and claiming the Democratic Party has “given up on counting votes in Iowa.”
“Maybe it’s Sleepy Joe, but it’s not looking that way,” Trump wrote on Friday before boarding a flight bound for North Carolina, referring to former Vice President Joe Biden.
“They lost millions & millions of dollars, all for NOTHING. But I WON Iowa big!” he continued.
The delayed result of the hotly contested first-in-the-nation race has become an unmitigated disaster for the Democrats — with both Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg declaring victory in the Hawkeye State.
The full results of Monday night’s caucus weren’t reported until four days later after an app designed to tabulate results from the more than 1,800 precincts went into meltdown on the night.
Buttigieg and Sanders won 11 delegates each — the fresh-faced former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, leading with just .1 percent of the final vote.
Biden, long considered the front-runner in the Democrats’ bid to reclaim the White House, had a disastrous showing and finished in fourth place.
The caucus chaos has opened deep divisions in the party while also shaking voters’ faith in the caucus process and the Iowa Democratic Party’s ability to hold the important race.
Trump won the Republican Iowa caucus with 97 percent of the vote but is declaring himself the overall victor as Democratic in-fighting weakens his opponents.
Despite declaring the Iowa caucus a giant waste of money, Trump defended the state’s outsized role in the primary race in a separate tweet and said he wouldn’t be changing the election calendar.
“Iowa and New Hampshire will not be moved from the Primary Schedule as long as I am President. Great tradition!” he wrote.
That decision, however, is up to state and local governments that run primaries, while caucuses are run by the parties themselves.
The frenzied race for the White House is now in New Hampshire ahead of the state’s primary Feb. 11 — before candidates move on to the Nevada caucuses Feb. 22 and the South Carolina caucuses Feb. 29.
