Donald Trump’s sympathizers in the media are ready to admit the billionaire businessman suffered a loss in Iowa, but they’re not ready to call it a setback.
Trump failed to lock down the first contest of the Republican presidential primary, the Iowa caucuses, and instead, he was bested by Ted Cruz, by just three points.
Though heading into the caucuses most polls showed Cruz and Trump in an effective tie, many political observers saw Trump’s loss as a severe blow to his campaign, which is largely fueled by the simple perception of Trump as a “winner.” Voices in the media who have spent the past several months pulling for Trump, however, didn’t see things that way.
“Ted Cruz winning Iowa is not an ‘upset,'” said Trump friend and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Twitter. “As we’ve said all along, Iowa is Cruz’s home-field advantage.”
Andrea Tantaros, a Republican commentator on Fox News, made a similar proclamation.
She said on Twitter that in Iowa, “a win never matters” and that the state is “tailor-made” for Cruz. (The last two Republican presidential candidates to win Iowa, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, did not go on to win the nomination.)
“Trump coming in right behind him in rural Iowa is pretty good,” she said.
Conservative author Ann Coulter, who will campaign for Trump in New Hampshire next week, joked on Twitter that Trump was “the leading GOP vote-getter tonight among natural-born-American candidates,” a reference to Canadian-born Ted Cruz.
Trump is the leading GOP vote-getter tonight, among natural-born-American candidates.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) February 2, 2016
Before the results were fully in, radio host Laura Ingraham anticipated that a Trump victory would be downplayed by the news media and that Marco Rubio, who was rightly projected to finish in third, would be seen as on the rise.
“Prediction: If Trump wins by 5 to 7 points, the media will yawn,” she said on Twitter. “If Rubio loses by 15 points, they will be in full-swoon mode, talk momentum.”
Ingraham’s prediction bore out to be somewhat accurate, at least as far as Rubio is concerned.
Breitbart News, the combative conservative website that has boosted Trump since he launched his campaign in June, was almost silent on their preferred candidate’s loss. The only headline the site ran related to it said that Trump was “classy” in his speech acknowledging his second-place finish.
The next contest takes place in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Trump, according to most state-level polls, is leading the GOP field by double digits.
