During an interview with Howard Stern (discovered by the left-wing site BuzzFeed), back on September 11th, 2002, six months before the Iraq War began, Donald Trump was asked about his support for the war, which at that point was still in the debate stage, “Yeah, I guess so”, Trump replied.
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Then, Todd pressed Trump on what he meant when he’d said he wished “the first time it was done correctly”.
“Wall Street’s just gonna go up like a rocket, even beyond, and it’s gonna continue and, you know, we have a strong and powerful country and let’s hope it all works out”, Trump said. That position, Trump suggested, demonstrated the quality of his judgment – after all, 48 out of 49 Republican senators voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002, so opposing the invasion was far from a mainstream Republican stance at the time.
The interview quickly moved past the subject of Iraq and Trump did not elaborate in that interview on his views on the Iraq war. “And you could see by my answer, I wasn’t exactly thrilled”, Trump said.
“I wish he wouldn’t criticize Bush, because I did like Bush”. “It was sort of, you know, it was just done, it was just – we dropped bombs”. When asked about the statement during a CNN town hall in South Carolina Thursday, Trump initially said he did not remember making the statement, but added, “I could have said that”. “And not only did he keep us safe, but no matter what you want to say about weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was in violation of United Nations resolutions… and George W. Bush enforced what the global community refused to do”.
“Michael Jackson was actually a very good friend of mine”, Trump said. We should have never been in Iraq. It was probably the first time anybody asked me that question.
“I’m a real estate person, a business person”.
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He added that he believed that any global objections to the war would not endanger American’s economy. That was, you know, many, many months before the war took place. And you know what we end up with? “And I think SC liked Bush”, said Kay Peters of St. George.
