Donald Trump issued a clarion call to the Republican party to unite behind him so he can ‘take the country’ back from Joe Biden after annihilating his rivals in the Iowa caucuses on Monday night.

The former president, 77, heaped praise on his fellow candidates and vowed to ‘straighten out all of the death and destruction that we’re witnessing’ following a record-breaking 30-point win in the party’s first primary contest.

It took just half an hour for Trump’s historic landslide victory to be called by TV networks as thousands of his die-hard supporters turned up to vote despite brutal sub-zero temperatures and icy roads in the Hawkeye state.

He finished with 51 percent of the vote, far ahead of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on 21 per cent, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley on 19 per cent, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy on 8 percent.   

After the blowout Trump quickly looked forward and said the ‘big night is going to be in November when we take back our country’ in the general election.

Instead of mocking the rest of the Republican field he applauded them for their campaigning and called them ‘very smart people, very capable people’.

‘I want to congratulate Ron and Nikki for having a good time together. I think they both actually did very well,’ Trump told a jubilant crowd of hundreds of supporters.

He also had kind words for Ramaswamy after blasting him in the final days before the caucus.

Later on Monday night Ramaswamy dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump.

‘I also want to congratulate Vivek because he did one hell of a job. He came from zero…that’s an amazing job,’ Trump said.

Iowa was the first state to vote in the Republican party’s process for choosing a presidential nominee.

Trump, who holds a huge lead in national polls, included several calls for unity in his speech.

He called on Republicans to ‘come together and straighten out the world and straighten out the problems.’

He sought to seize the momentum from his convincing win, even as the race for the GOP presidential nomination shifts immediately to New Hampshire, where Haley has been rising in the polls. DeSantis plans to hold events in South Carolina, which holds its primary on February 24, and New Hampshire on Tuesday, after failing to use his extensive campaign organization in Iowa to pull closer to Trump.

‘Because of your support in spite of all of what they threw at us,’ said DeSantis at his own rally, ‘we got our ticket punched out of Iowa.’ 

Haley said the results make it a ‘two-person race’ between her and Trump.

Trump’s remarks came in a victory speech where he paid tribute to his late mother-in-law Amalija Knavs and thanked ‘my incredible wife’ former first lady Melania Trump.

He joked about his mother in law. ‘Boy did she take care of Barron. ‘That’s how he got so tall.’

Trump was joined onstage at his victory party by sons Eric and Don Jr., but there was no sign of daughter Ivanka. 

Trump celebrated after storming to victory in the first primary contest in just 30 minutes by waiting on stage as Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’ played to the crowd.

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