Speed Reads

2020 iowa caucuses

Iowa's Democratic Party hung up on a precinct secretary while he was live on CNN

If one feverish scramble of a segment on CNN could describe Monday night's Iowa caucuses, this is it.

Iowa faced what CNN portrayed as a crisis Monday night as the state took longer and longer to report any results from its Democratic caucuses. Thanks to an apparent snafu with a reporting app, the network was forced to turn to tweets from Story County precinct secretary Shawn Sebastian to get a taste of one area's results. CNN's Wolf Blitzer eventually called Sebastian to hear more, and his frustration with it all was obvious.

Sebastian complained to Blitzer about how the app "just doesn't work" as he waited on hold to speak to an Iowa Democratic party official on Monday. And when Sebastian finally got through, the Iowa Democrat's luck got even worse.

In all fairness to the Iowa Democrats, Sebastian did take a good 15 seconds before he stopped talking to Blitzer and told the person on the other end of the line he was there.