With the news Thursday that a Quinnipiac poll showed Ben Carson pulling ahead of Donald Trump across Iowa in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump’s Twitter account—which has always been long on trolling and short on apologizing—was mentioned in this tweet.
#BenCarson is now leading in the #polls in #Iowa… Too much #Monsanto in the #corn creates issues in the brain? @realDonaldTrump #GOP
— Nick Roquefort-Villeneuve (@mygreenhippo) October 22, 2015
What followed seemingly was a major misstep when Trump retweeted the message—a message, it should be noted, that could be seen as rather insulting to residents of the Hawkeye State—to his 4.6 million followers.
Naturally, Trump had to apologize for his potentially offensive (re)tweet.
The young intern who accidentally did a Retweet apologizes.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2015
Correction: Trump said his intern apologized and not Trump.
The retweet came after news broke that Carson had garnered the support of 28 percent of Iowa Republicans who likely will participate in caucuses, compared to Trump’s 20 percent. As the New York Times points out, the Quinnipiac poll from Sept. 11 had Trump at 27 percent and Carson at 21 percent.
Luckily, for much of the rest of the day, Trump was back to Twitter trolling…
"@toddinwichita @realDonaldTrump Hillary is doing a HORRIBLE job at #BenghaziHearings reading from the script. #pathetic . She is no leader"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2015
…and boasting.
#ChrisWallace, who interviewed me on Sunday, had his highest ratings since Feb of '09. Congratulations! https://t.co/o49V73AZZB
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2015
Will any of this help or hurt Trump? Who knows. When Trump suffers no consequences for insulting an American hero and his supporters don’t seem to care when he tweets out things like this, it’s hard to know what any of this means.
Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman