Donald Trump admitted Monday that he doesn’t understand how he lost the lead to retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson in Iowa.
“Some of these polls coming out, I don’t quite get it,” Trump told MSNBC. “I was number one pretty much in Iowa from the beginning. And I would say we’re doing very well there so I was a little bit surprised.”
“This one I don’t quite get,” he added. “I would have thought we are doing much better. I think we are doing much better.”
Trump said as the new leader in Iowa, Carson would have to withstand more scrutiny, and then applied some of his own.
“You know, Ben wants to get rid of Medicare, I heard that over the weekend, he wants to abolish Medicare,” Trump said. “And I think abolishing Medicare, I don’t think you’re going to get away with that one. And it’s actually a program that’s worked. It’s a program that some people love actually.”
Despite losing his footing in Iowa, Trump said he would not write off the Iowa caucus and would fight to the end to win it.
At the same time, he said he had his doubts about the latest polls, and insisted that they are “not scientific,” even though he’s leaned heavily on polls showing him winning in many of his speeches.
When asked what changes he would make in his campaign going forward, Trump said, “I want to be extremely cautious with words.”
