Trump accuses Cruz of stealing Iowa caucuses through ‘fraud’

NEW YORK-Hillary Clinton laid into her Democratic challenger on Wednesday, accusing Bernie Sanders of trying unfairly to hog a progressive mantle but admitted she had work to do to win over young voters.

He made the sensational accusations on Twitter, telling his almost six million followers that the first-time senator from Texas had committed fraud and lied to voters.

“We just got in from Iowa, where we astounded the world!” he exclaimed.

Trump also attacked Cruz from the stump on Tuesday night, bashing the Canadian-born senator’s honesty, Business Insider reported.

The prominence the presidential campaign calendar gives to Iowa and New Hampshire, each with a population smaller than the city of Los Angeles, has pluses and minuses.

Cruz won 27.7 percent of vote at Iowa’s Republican Caucus, firmly ahead of Trump’s 24 percent and third-place finisher Marco Rubio, who had about 23 percent.

But any humility was fleeting as Trump went on to say he beat Rubio by getting support from nearly 3,000 Iowans – “That’s a lot of people” – and that he had gotten a larger percentage of support than any other Republican candidate in history “except for that one number”, he added, referring to Cruz’s win. As Bernie Sanders said in his post-Iowa speech, he is essentially tied with Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump ran a much more cost-effective race in Iowa, leveraging the fact that he generates free media attention the way Iowa generates ethanol. Both candidates did poorly in Monday’s Iowa caucuses, which were dominated by Mr Cruz’s defeat of Mr Trump.

“Make no mistake we are in a fight to the finish”, Clinton told supporters upon her arrival – setting her sights on the trio leading the Republican race. Cruz has apologized for the “mistake”.

“There are Twitter addiction support groups, so he should seek out his local chapter”. “I understand that Donald finds it very hard to lose… but at the end of the day, the Iowa people spoke”.

Trump accused the Cruz campaign of misleading caucus-goers by circulating a false election-night rumor implying that retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was planning to drop out of the race.

Clinton called the comments “kind of a low blow”.