Trump gloats on Truth Social after early Iowa caucus win: Live updates – The Independent

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Former president heads to New York for defamation trial after huge win in Iowa caucuses
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Donald Trump calls New York fraud trial ‘terrible witch hunt’
Donald Trump has been named as the overwhelming winner of the Iowa caucuses even as votes were still being cast across the state.
The former president told Iowa voters their support means he will be able to persecute and punish “liars, cheaters, thugs… and other quite nice people” as he campaigned in the Hawkeye State.
After the networks called Mr Trump as the projected winner, the former president told Fox News Digital: “It really is an honour that, minutes after, they’ve announced I’ve won — against very credible competition — great competition, actually.”
He added: “It is a tremendous thing and a tremendous feeling.”
The Republican frontrunner was widely tipped to trounce rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley when the Midwestern state went to the polls.
Meanwhile, the ex-president also launched into attacks over the weekend on Judge Lewis Kaplan, overseeing the E Jean Carroll defamation trial in New York, after he was denied a delay so that he could attend his mother-in-law’s funeral, a date on which he will now be campaigning.
Mr Trump will appear at the courthouse on Tuesday before heading to New Hampshire to campaign there ahead of the state’s primary next week.
Ron DeSantis was trolled in Iowa after being presented with a “participation trophy” ahead of the state caucuses on Monday.
The incident occurred on Saturday after the Florida governor staged a town hall in Atlantic, Iowa. An unidentified man approached Mr DeSantis, holding a small award.
“Governor DeSantis I want to present to you this participation trophy,” he said, prompting laughter from those gathered.
“You’re probably not going to win the election but we’re proud of you for trying,” the man added, before declaring: “He’s special, he’s unique, and he’s our little snowflake.”
Mr DeSantis did not take the gift and tried to laugh off the prank, telling the man: “I don’t do participation trophies, sorry buddy.”
Mike Bedigan has the story:
The incident occurred on Saturday after the Florida governor staged a town hall in Atlantic, Iowa
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is dropping out of the race after low numbers in Iowa caucuses, sources have told Bloomberg and CNN.
Mr Ramaswamy told staff in a private meeting that he would endorse Donald Trump on stage tonight in Iowa.
Iowa caucus-goers are going full MAGA, with many expressing beliefs in debunked conspiracy theories as former President Donald Trump is projected to win the first-in-the-nation contest.
In a CNN entrance poll, 68 per cent of those who arrived early to caucus sites said they didn’t believe that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected. Among Trump voters, that number rose to 88 per cent, CBS noted.
Steve Kornacki of MSNBC reported that a large education gap between those backing Mr Trump and the other main candidates, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Among caucusgoers with college degrees, 35 per cent backed Mr Trump, 33 per cent supported Ms Haley, and 23 per cent backed Mr DeSantis, according to the entrance poll shared by the network. Among those without a college degree, 65 per cent backed Mr Trump, 17 per cent supported Mr DeSantis, and eight per cent backed Ms Haley.
In the NBC poll, 79 per cent of Haley backers said they thought Mr Biden was legitimately elected, the same was true for 40 per cent of those supporting Mr DeSantis and six per cent of those backing Mr Trump.
Gustaf Kilander reports:
Sixty-eight per cent of those who arrived early to caucus sites said they didn’t believe that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected

Former president Donald Trump will be back in a New York City federal courthouse on Tuesday for a trial to determine the damages he owes columnist E Jean Carroll after defaming her, again.
The trial arrives approximately four months after Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Mr Trump defamed Ms Carroll in 2019 when he denied sexually assaulting her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodmans in the mid-1990s.
Ms Carroll first came forward with allegations of rape during Mr Trump’s presidency in her book What Do We Need Men For? He denied the allegations and claimed, “She’s not my type”.
Now, this week’s trial will focus only on the damages that Mr Trump owes Ms Carroll for making the defamatory statements. Judge Kaplan made the decision after the jury in a separate defamation trial found Mr Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
The previous defamation trial focused on statements Mr Trump made on Truth Social in 2022 in which he called Ms Carroll’s rape allegations “a Hoax and a lie”.
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Opening arguments will begin the defamation lawsuit on Tuesday, and the former president said he would attend
The lopsided landslide blowout that resulted from the year-long primary race between former president Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis unofficially began in November of 2022, when Mr Trump — then planning his next campaign but speaking in support of then-Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz — bestowed a pejorative moniker on the Sunshine State executive.
As he spoke in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Mr Trump referred to Mr DeSantis, who also had not yet announced his candidacy in this year’s presidential contest, as “Ron DeSanctimonious”.
For professional Trump-watchers such as your correspondent, the bestowing of a nickname upon an opponent by the ex-president was, at the time, a sign that Mr Trump considered the Florida governor to be a threat to his hopes of regaining his party’s nomination to take on the man who beat him in the 2020 election, President Joe Biden, in 2024.
Continue reading…
The Florida governor was ‘DeFuture’ of his party once – but failing to exploit his rival’s glaring weaknesses has cost him dearly
The Associated Press declared Trump the winner of the Iowa caucuses based on an analysis of early returns as well as results of AP VoteCast, a survey of voters who planned to caucus on Monday night. Both showed Trump with an insurmountable lead.
Initial results from eight counties showed Trump with far more than half of the total votes counted as of 8:31 pm. ET, with the rest of the field trailing far behind. These counties include rural areas that are demographically and politically similar to a large number of counties that have yet to report.
AP VoteCast also shows Trump with sizable leads among both men and women, as well as every age group and geographic regions throughout the state.
AP VoteCast is a survey conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research of more than 1,500 voters who said they planned to take part in Monday’s Republican caucuses in Iowa.
Among voters who identify as born-again Christians, the survey found that Trump was favored by 58% voters intending to caucus, compared to 18% for DeSantis and 13% for Nikki Haley. Polls showed that was a relatively weak group of backers for Trump in Iowa in 2016.
So far, Trump is significantly outperforming his second-place 2016 caucus finish, when he received 24% of the vote, compared to 28% for Ted Cruz.
Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former White House communications director, admitted he would support Joe Biden if he went head-to-head again with Donald Trump.
This election is “going to be a battle for democracy”, Mr Scaramucci told CNN.
Speaking of the dangers of another Trump presidency, Mr Scaramucci said, “he’s going to expand executive power, he’s gonna make things rougher for people, he’s already said he’s going after his adversaries using the Department of Justice.”
“For all of these reasons, we gotta help the Democrats here if [Trump] is eventually the nominee,” the former aide added.
When host Jim Acosta asked to clarify if he is backing President Biden in 2024, Mr Scaramucci said, “100 per cent, if Donald Trump is the nominee.”
Kelly Rissman has the story:
Mr Scaramucci said he is ‘100 per cent’ throwing his support behind Mr Biden’s re-election if Mr Trump is the GOP nominee
Fox News Digital interviewed former president Donald Trump shortly after the networks called the Iowa caucuses for him.
“I feel great,” Mr Trump said. “I am greatly honoured by such an early call.”
“It really is an honour that, minutes after, they’ve announced I’ve won — against very credible competition — great competition, actually,” the former president said.
He added: “It is a tremendous thing and a tremendous feeling.”
“I feel really invigorated and strong for our country,” Mr Trump said. “We want to Make America Great Again—the greatest slogan ever—and the fact is, that’s what we did.”
Not since the victory of then-Texas Governor George W Bush in the 2000 Republican primary has the Iowa caucuses picked the eventual GOP nominee.
Ironically, as the first-in-the-nation contest looks set to do so again nearly a quarter-century later, former President Donald Trump’s expected overwhelming victory on Monday 15 January may reveal the diminished influence of the caucuses, which the Democrats have now dropped altogether in favour of mail-in ballots for the 2024 contest.
Since the 1970s, the entire point of the caucuses has been that in a small state such as Iowa, an unknown presidential candidate can work hard and shake as many hands as humanly possible, perform well above expectations, and subsequently ride the wave of attention and momentum all the way to the nomination.
The example most cited is the 1976 win for Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia who would go on to beat incumbent President Gerald Ford.
Mr Carter did the grunt work, starting to spend time in the state before anyone else, and building his support by doing person-to-person politicking.
Mr Trump has hosted massive rallies, speaking to hundreds and sometimes thousands of people at once. If fewer than 400 attended, it was considered a small event. The ex-president looks likely to win Monday’s contest handily having done very little, if any, of the small-scale campaigning that used to be required to win. Iowa is no longer universally seen as the stepping stone it once was.
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Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a caucus site at Horizon Events Center, in Clive, Iowa, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024
AP
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