After placing second in Iowa’s Republican caucus, Donald Trump closed out Monday night with a less-than-five minute speech to supporters — a sharp contrast to his usual addresses, which often run closer to an hour. But the New York real estate mogul also took to Twitter Tuesday morning for a more characteristic postmortem via social media.
Blaming the media for unfair coverage of what he called a “long-shot great finish” in the Hawkeye State, Trump began reminding people of an undercurrent that he said followed him throughout Iowa: He wasn’t supposed to win there. Trump echoed the sentiment during his Monday night speech in Iowa, reiterating on Tuesday that it factored into his strategy on the trail.
“Because I was told I could not do well in Iowa, I spent very little there – a fraction of Cruz and Rubio,” he wrote.
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But that doesn’t necessarily jive with Trump’s expressed and repeated wishes to win in Iowa. In the days leading up to the caucus, the Republican presidential front-runner repeatedly reminded voters that if they helped him win he Iowa, he believed they could run the table on the contests to follow.
Now, with eyes trained on New Hampshire, where he’ll hold a rally Tuesday evening, Trump is making sure the voters don’t make the same mistake as he seems to believe Iowa voters made. In short, he wants the voters to give him some credit for self-funding. “I don’t believe I have been given any credit by the voters for self-funding my campaign, the only one. I will keep doing, but not worth it,” he claimed Tuesday. However, when asked by NBC News what draws them to the candidate, voters across the U.S. frequently bring up how much they appreciate and support Trump’s decision to self-fund. And while he congratulated Cruz Monday night on his win, by Tuesday afternoon, Trump was back on the attack. “Anybody who watched all of Ted Cruz’s far too long, rambling, overly flamboyant speech last nite would say that was his Howard Dean moment!” he tweeted.
Ali Vitali is MS NOW's senior congressional correspondent and the host of "Way Too Early." She is the author of "Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet." Recommended
