Everything was all good a few days ago. Donald Trump was coasting in the Iowa polls even after ditching the state’s final debate as the latest maneuver in his petty one-sided feud with Fox’s Megyn Kelly. But then it all came crumbling down.

Trump, of course, finished second in Iowa, with Ted Cruz, the man who he had been gleefully picking on for weeks, clinching a three-point victory relatively early in the night. Trump was unusually chastened in his concession speech and in tweets the next day, and now he has admitted that he may have fucked himself over with one of his many bold chess moves:

“I think it could’ve been with the debate,” he told reporters last night. “I think some people were disappointed that I didn’t go into the debate.”

In an interview last night with Sean Hannity he spun his spurning of Fox as something he “did for the troops,” but in a chat today on Morning Joe Trump also said blowing off the debate was not his only miscalculation:

“I think we could’ve used a better ground game, a term I wasn’t even familiar with. You know, when you hear ‘ground game,’ you say, ‘What the hell is that?’ Now I’m familiar with it,” Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when asked if his campaign needed better organization to win in Iowa.

“I think in retrospect we should’ve had a better ground game, I would’ve funded a better ground game,” he continued. “But people told me my ground game was fine. And I think by most standards it was.”

What the hell is that, indeed.

Contact the author at jordan@gawker.com / image via Getty