President Donald Trump told attendees at a campaign rally Monday in New Hampshire that he believed the delayed results in the Iowa caucuses meant that the entire process was rigged to take the victory away from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Trump was referring to the belief that the 2016 primaries were set up behind the scenes to be won by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who went on to become the Democratic Party's presidential nominee against Trump, a claim which has yet to be factually proven.
With results in the 2020 Iowa caucus still the subject of some debate, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been declared the winner with 26.2 percent of the vote. Buttigieg received 13 state delegates while Sanders, who garnered 26.1 percent of the vote, was allocated 12 state delegates.
"Does anyone know who won Iowa?" Trump asked. He then asked attendees South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul if they had any idea who had been named the victor in the Iowa caucuses. After Paul and Graham answered in the negative, Trump said it was "unbelievable."
"Nobody knows who won," Trump said. "Actually, I think they're trying to take it away from Bernie again. I think Bernie came in second, can you believe it?"
"They're doing it to you again, Bernie!" Trump added.
With the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, both Sanders and Buttigieg have called for a partial recanvass of the Iowa caucus results. Buttigieg has asked for a recanvass of 66 precincts and all Iowa satellite caucuses. Sanders has requested that 25 precincts and three satellite caucuses be recanvassed.
In a statement, Sanders' senior adviser Jeff Weaver said that while the final results may not change, "it is a necessary part of making sure Iowans can trust the final results of the caucus."
"All I can say about Iowa is it was an embarrassment," Sanders told CNN on Sunday. "It was a disgrace to the good people of Iowa who take their responsibilities in the caucuses very seriously. They screwed it up very badly, is what the Iowa Democratic Party did. But at the end of the day to me what is most important, and I don't know how anybody can debate it, we ended up on the first ballot 6,000 votes ahead of anybody else."
"After the realignment process, which is a fine process," Sanders continued, "we ended up 2,500 votes ahead of Mayor Buttigieg. When you win an election by 6,000 or 2,500 votes from where I come from you win the primary or the caucus so we are confident that we in fact won the Iowa caucus and we thank the people of Iowa for that."
Sanders did tell MSNBC in 2019, "Some people say that if maybe the system was not rigged against me, I would have won the nomination and defeated Donald Trump."
Weaver told MSNBC Monday that this year's Democratic nomination process "is not currently rigged."
