A U.S. representative who said he was upset about the results of the Republican caucus in Iowa claimed the outcome may have been affected by how quickly the race was called for former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who previously endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary, criticized a decision by the Associated Press to call the Iowa caucus for Trump less than an hour after votes began being counted.
“Are you kidding me?” he said at a caucus site in Clive, Iowa, that was well-attended, per The New York Times. “They haven’t even started voting yet and heard all the speeches and AP calls it?”
Roy claimed that the decision by the AP to call the race so early could have affected the outcome of the election since so many voters had not yet cast their ballots.
“It’s certainly going to raise questions for people in that room for whom it was called before they even got to vote,” he said, per NYT.
The congressman has expressed his support for Desantis frequently, saying that the United States desperately needs “somebody in the White House that’ll deliver.”
“I want somebody who I can trust to do what he said he would do and would serve eight years to do it,” he said while at a DeSantis campaign stop in Iowa, according to The Texas Tribune.
Roy’s endorsement of DeSantis also came with some criticism of Trump, with Roy claiming that the former president was “afraid to actually debate” and just “hangs out in his basement in Florida.”
“What’s he afraid of? You know, look, I’m happy to debate him if he wants to, anywhere. I’m just a little old congressman. Why won’t he debate Ron DeSantis or any of the other candidates? I think he should,” said Roy while on CNN last month, per The Hill.
These comments were made in response to a decision by Trump to abstain from participating in the Republican Party presidential debates. The former president argued that his opponents “ought to stop wasting their time” by taking part in the debates. Since Trump’s decisive win in Iowa on Tuesday, two scheduled Republican primary debates have been canceled as a result of presidential hopefuls DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley pulling out, according to the AP.
Trump has also taken shots at Roy throughout the former’s 2024 campaign, writing in a Truth Social post that the congressman is a “RINO.”
The former president also claimed that Roy would be “very beatable” if any “smart and energetic Republican in the Great State of Texas” chose to run against him. However, Trump’s post came seven days after the Texas primary filing deadline on December 11, meaning that Roy will run unopposed.