HENNIKER, New Hampshire —Texas Sen. Ted Cruz countered Donald Trump’s assertion that he “stole” the Iowa caucus on the trail at New England College on Wednesday.
Trump accused Cruz of Caucus Night impropriety and said: “He didn’t win Iowa, he stole it.” Cruz’s stump speech included a comeback seeming to argue against Trump without actually acknowledging the accusations. Cruz pointed to grassroots support as the reason for his success.
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“You want to know how we shock all the pollsters, all the media, all the pundits in Iowa?” Cruz said. “Because we had people all across the state of Iowa who didn’t just show up. They called nine other people.”
Cruz said while the media expected Trump to emerge victorious on Monday, conservative caucus-goers ensured “that the media is not going to pick the next Republican nominee or the next President of the United States.”
The senator’s stump speech was largely devoid of much emphasis on his faith, which appeared routine in his Iowa stump speeches. Instead, Cruz used much of his time onstage criticizing Obama’s “photo-op foreign policy” and how he believes the American free enterprise system can remedy income inequality.
“Right now, we’re doing basically photo-op foreign policy. It’s a bomb here. It’s a missile there. It blows up on CNN, we get to see some explosions on TV, but ISIS, it doesn’t bother them at all,” Cruz said. “They have a new facility, it’s called Jihadist University, where they’re training jihadists. Why is that not rubble? Although, I wouldn’t mind waiting until freshman orientation week.”
Cruz, who ranks first in the Washington Examiner‘s newest GOP presidential power rankings, will make five stops in the Granite State on Wednesday.
