"Ted Cruz didn't win Iowa, he stole it."
Donald Trump appears to be taking his loss in the Iowa caucus a little hard.
After losing the first election of the primary season Donald Trump accused Senator Ted Cruz, the potential presidential nominee who came in first place, of cheating.
The accusation is a far cry from Trump’s remarkably gracious acceptance speech on Monday night, where the candidate congratulated Senator Cruz on his first place finish and said he was looking forward to a rematch in the New Hampshire primary next week.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump is calling for a re-match in Iowa—and threatening to sue over the results.
The announcement came from Trump’s camp two days after the final election results were called on Monday night. In typical Donald Trump fashion, the eccentric billionaire made his opinion known over a series of tweets on Wednesday.
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Trump went on to call Cruz “a total fraud” and repeated his call for the state of Iowa to nullify the election results.
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In the same Twitter rant, Trump accused the Cruz campaign of giving voter false information. On Monday CNN reported that potential nominee Ben Carson would be returning to his home in Florida to “get a fresh pair of clothes.” It was this odd and poorly timed statement from the Carson camp that Trump is using to claim the moral high ground.
On the night of the election Cruz’s campaign had instructed its precinct captains to pass this information along to voters by implying that Carson would be dropping out of the campaign soon. Trump alleges that voters who would have cast a ballot for Carson were persuaded by this information and, in the final hour, voted for Cruz instead giving the Texan senator the bump that he needed to defeat Trump in the caucus.
In response to the allegations of cheating, Ted Cruz’s campaign has replied with humor. Rick Tyler, Ted Cruz’s Communications Director told CNN, “Reality hit the reality TV star in Iowa, so nobody is talking about him now, so he’s trying to regain some attention on Twitter. There are Twitter addiction support groups, so he should seek out his local chapter.”
The Senator also took to Twitter to take a few cheap shots at Donald Trump’s, seemingly inherent, inability to lose gracefully saying, “”Yet another #Trumpertantrum… @realDonaldTrump very angry w/the people of Iowa. They actually looked at his record.”
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