Donald Trump Falsely Claims To Have Won the Iowa Caucuses Twice: "I’ve Never Seen Spirit Like This"

Donald Trump swept the Iowa caucuses, marking a significant first step toward his third consecutive GOP presidential nomination. On Monday, he made a fraudulent claim that he had won the Iowa Caucuses twice. Trump made a short speech to the media at Hotel Fort Des Moines, and Bloomberg’s Stephanie Lai captured Trump’s statements and put them on X.

Trump claimed, "We’re gonna have a great night and a fantastic place. We’ve won it twice as you know, two elections and I think we’re gonna have a tremendous night. The people are fantastic and I’ve never seen spirit like they have countrywide. But in Iowa, I’ve never seen spirit like this." Although Trump prevailed in the 2020 Iowa caucuses as the incumbent president, he was defeated by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a close contest in 2016. After losing the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Trump erroneously claimed that Cruz had 'stolen' the nomination and said that the opposition team had disseminated false material on purpose. 

Trump has always promoted ludicrous allegations of election tampering and fraud. A few weeks before the 2016 election, candidate Trump began to cast doubt on Colorado mail-in votes but made such claims without proof, according to CPR News. Then, in 2017, Trump established a committee to look into voting fraud in the nation after claiming that rampant fraud lost him the popular vote after winning the 2016 election, even though this was untrue, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. 

A malfunctioning app and a disjointed state party caused the 2020 Democratic caucuses to collapse momentarily, raising concerns inside Trump's team about the results potentially being 'rigged' against (presumably) Bernie Sanders, as was reported by Vox at the time. Sons of his went further. Eric Trump wrote at the time, "Mark my words, they are rigging this thing... what a mess. This is why people don’t want the #Dems running our county."

Nonetheless, Trump's win in Iowa is noteworthy. In all 99 of Iowa's counties, he received the most votes, except one, which he lost by one vote. Before now, no candidate has won an Iowa race by a margin of more than 12 points. After almost all ballots were tallied, Trump received 51% of the vote, followed by DeSantis with 21% and Nikki Haley with 19%. He won over men and women, young and old. Additionally, he won over hard-right conservative and evangelical supporters, with whom he had trouble gaining much footing back in 2016. Trump still has to put in more effort to become the face of the Republican Party. He will face a more difficult fight from Haley in New Hampshire next week, where polls suggest his once commanding margin has been cut to near single digits.