Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump has routinely boasted how he was the only person now running for the Republican nomination for president that was against George W. Bush’s war in Iraq.
But it turns out Trump — in a 2002 interview with Howard Stern unearthed by BuzzFeed — actually publicly expressed support for the invasion. Asked if he supported the war by Stern, Trump said: “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.”
Trump later became outspoken against the war. But his comments on Stern’s show contradict his characterization of his past views, expressed as recently as during last weekend’s debate in South Carolina.
During the CBS debate, Trump said: “I’m the only one on this stage that said, ‘Do not go into Iraq. Do not attack Iraq.’ Nobody else on this stage said that. And I said it loud and strong. And I was in the private sector. I wasn’t a politician, fortunately. But I said it, and I said it loud and clear, ‘You’ll destabilize the Middle East.’ That’s exactly what happened.”
Asked about these comments on Thursday evening, Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “By the time the war started, I was against it, and shortly thereafter, I was really against.”