Democratic presidential hopeful and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg seemed to have claimed victory last night in the Iowa caucuses, despite the results being delayed after chaotic handling from the Democratic Party.
“We heard you say, ‘We’re going on to New Hampshire victorious.’ But how can you do that when the official results are not in?” “CBS This Morning” host Gayle King pressed Buttigieg Tuesday morning.
“Shouldn’t you wait?” King asked.
The Democrat suggested he was referring to a personal victory, due to how well his campaign did via internal polling, rather than declaring a win in Iowa he did not yet have.
“Well, we have the results from our organization, and if you look at what we were able to do, what happened last night, the fact that this campaign was able to gather support in urban, suburban, and rural areas alike, in counties that Hillary Clinton won, counties that Donald Trump won, we are thrilled and absolutely consider that a victory,” Buttigieg responded.
On Monday night, the Iowa Democrats released a statement announcing delayed results to the Iowa caucuses over “inconsistencies in the reporting.”
“We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” the statement said. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.”
“This is simply a reporting issue,” the statement reassured disgruntled party members, “the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.”
As noted by The Daily Wire, top Democratic figures have already come forward to questions the results soon to come out from Iowa:
A top surrogate for 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden suggested on Monday night, amid the chaos that broke out in the Iowa caucuses, that the results from the caucuses could not be trusted.
ABC News reporter Molly Nagle tweeted: “I asked [former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT)] if he thought the Iowa caucus results were discredited following the inconsistencies reported tonight in the results.”
Nagle reports that Dodd told her: “Yeah, sounds to me like if you can’t—you know, if this is wrong what else is wrong?”
President Donald Trump has capitalized on the Democrat Party chaos. A statement released Tuesday morning from the president’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale mocked the party, arguing that if Democrats can’t correctly run an Iowa caucus, how can they be trusted to run the nation’s health care?
“Democrats are stewing in a caucus mess of their own creation with the sloppiest train wreck in history,” said Parscale. “It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process.”
“And these are the people who want to run our entire health care system?” Parscale continued. “Tonight President Trump posted a record performance in the well-run GOP Iowa caucuses with record turnout for an incumbent.”
Video of Buttigieg’s appearance on “CBS This Morning” below:
FIRST ON @CBSThisMorning: Mayor @PeteButtigieg reacts to the results of the Iowa caucuses after last night's first-in-the-nation nominating contest.
Watch the full interview coming up on @CBS. https://t.co/6O9SuoPyG3 pic.twitter.com/4TFkVQurw5
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) February 4, 2020