Donald Trump has repeated throughout his presidential campaign that he opposed the Iraq war
before the March 19, 2003 invasion, often taking credit for his judgement and vision — claiming he knew it would destabilize the Middle East.
On Feb. 13, in the most recent debate, Trump
said: “I said it loud and clear, ‘You’ll destabilize the Middle East.'” In the Sept. 16, 2015 debate, Trump
claimed that he “fought very, very hard against us … going into Iraq,” saying he could provide “25 different stories” to prove his opposition.
Trump has even
said that he was “visited by people from the White House” in attempt to silence him, because, he said, he was getting “a disproportionate amount of publicity” for his opposition to the war.
There is no evidence that we could find, however, that he spoke against the war
before it started, although we did find he expressed early concerns about the cost and direction of the war a few months after it started.
Others have looked, but no one else — including
PolitiFact and the
Washington Post Fact Checker — has been able to find any evidence to support his claims, either. Now, BuzzFeed reports that Trump indicated his support for war in a
radio interview with shock jock Howard Stern on Sept. 11, 2002 — a little more than six months before the war started.
Stern asked Trump directly if he supported going to war with Iraq, and Trump hesitantly responded,
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Donald Trump has repeated throughout his presidential campaign that he opposed the Iraq war before the March 19, 2003 invasion. But there's no evidence of that. Here's a timeline of statements Trump made in 2002 and 2003 about the war.
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