Donald Trump’s national spokeswoman Katrina Pierson pushed back Wednesday against recent claims by GOP strategists that the Republican front-runner isn’t running a serious campaign operation in early voting states.
“I’m not quite sure why Karl Rove thinks he knows anything about the internal mechanisms of the Trump campaign considering his last couple of efforts in election cycles haven’t turned out his own voters to the polls,” Pierson told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum.
Rove, a veteran campaign strategist and former adviser to President George W. Bush, recently suggested that Trump’s campaign has done little to ensure his massive campaign crowds show up to vote on Feb. 1.
“He has big rallies, but his people have not used the database that has been created by those rallies to organize people to turn out to the [Iowa] caucuses,” Rove said during an appearance on Fox News. “We’ve had people who’ve had big crowds before and who have not ended up winning the Iowa caucuses.”
However, Pierson insisted Wednesday that “voters and pundits are going to be very surprised on election night [in Iowa].”
“I think Mr. Trump is going to win Iowa and I think he’s going to win the primary very handedly,” she said.
Asked about recent polls that show Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton beating Trump should the two compete in the general election, Pierson said they didn’t matter.
“These poll numbers are because that race hasn’t started yet,” she claimed.
“We look at earlier polls where Donald Trump was behind and everyone said Donald Trump can’t win the nomination, and here we are on a clear path to victory,” Pierson added.
Trump is second in the Washington Examiner‘s latest presidential power rankings.
