Trump: ‘I Really Don’t Know What I Meant’ in Saying I Wanted War in Iraq in 2002

‘Who knows what was in my head’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
TODD: "All right. Let me move to the issue of Iraq. Obviously a couple clips came out. Let me play you the Howard Stern clip in 2002."
TRUMP: "Okay. Sure."
[clip starts]
TRUMP: "We have an idea who the enemy is and a lot of times the politicians don’t want to tell you that."
STERN: "Are you for invading Iraq?"
TRUMP: "Yeah, I guess so. Um, I wish it was — I wish the first time it was done correctly."
[clip ends]
TODD: "Now, clearly you didn’t sound like an enthusiastic supporter of the war. But I am curious in the second part of that quote, I wish the first time it was done correctly. What do you mean by that?"
TRUMP: "Well, what I mean by that is it almost shouldn’t have been done. You know, I really don’t even know what I mean because that was a long time ago. Who knows what was in my head. I think that it wasn’t done correctly in retrospect it shouldn’t have been done at all. It was sort of, you know, it was done. We dropped bombs. Now, if you look back, actually that was probably the correct way of doing it, not going in and not upsetting giving them a lesson or not. I think senior actually did a pretty good job of what he was doing. He went in, he taught them a lesson. What happened is he was taunted because Saddam Hussein was saying we drove back the Americans, the ugly Americans were driven back, the power of Iraq, the power. Well, we weren’t driven back, he just decided not — general and others said let’s not go in. Although I think maybe he wanted to go in. If you look at my conversation with Howard, we’re very good friends, different than what you hear on the radio, but we’re very good friends. Don’t forget I was a real estate man and businessman. That was the first time I think that question was ever even asked of me. That was long before the war took place. That was many, many months before the war took place. And you could see by my answer I wasn’t exactly thrilled. Joe scar borough released a point yesterday a tweet saying trump is right, look what he just said. You have to take a look at that. But regardless the war in Iraq was a disaster. It was probably the worst thing, if you look at the Middle East now, all started because of that horrible decision to go into Iraq. And you know what we end up with? Nothing. We spent $2 trillion. We have thousands and thousands of lives killed. Just thousands carnage. And we have wounded warriors, who I love all over the place, right, and we have nothing and Iran is now taking over Iraq. They’ve been trying to for many, many decades and now they’re finally taking over Iraq. As we sit here they’re taking over Iraq. We get nothing."

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