US President Donald Trump has claimed he never guaranteed not to take the US to war. Responding to a question by a journalist at a ‘Meet the Press’ interview telecast on Sunday, Trump said, “I didn’t guarantee no war… Why would I have built the strongest military in the world? I built our military.”
However, the latest claim sharply contradicts multiple of his statements over the years, and also his biography on the White House website that credits him with “putting a stop to endless wars”.
With no end in sight for the Iran war, which started with joint strikes by the US and Israel, here’s a look at his statements where he advocated against war.
November 6, 2024
While accepting his victory in the 2024 US presidential elections, he said, “We want to have security… We want to have things be good, safe. We want great education. We want a strong and powerful military. And ideally, we don’t have to use it. You know, we had no war – four years, we had no wars, except we defeated ISIS. We defeated ISIS in record time, but we had no wars.
“They said: ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
October 5, 2024
During a campaign in Pennsylvania, he said “We had no wars… We had peace through strength. It was a great thing, peace through strength, and that’s it.”
He stated, “You don’t have to send your kids out to war, have your kid blown up for a country that you’ve never heard of and that doesn’t want anything to do with you anyway. But I will not send you to fight and die in a foolish, never-ending foreign war.”
Story continues below this ad
August 5, 2024
He claimed that the only war the US engaged in under his watch was that against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and that too had started long ago. “And we defeated – I defeated – them in a very short amount of time, very quickly… And we had no wars under the Trump administration, and that’s a great thing, you know. That’s a really great thing. It was I think 82 years since that’s happened.”
He added, “And we won’t have wars again. But we could have a war before we even get there. That’s the problem.”
March 4, 2023
Three years ago at the CPAC convention, Trump said he was the only president in modern history to not have had any wars. “I was the only president in modern history who did not have any new wars,” he said. “No new wars. I finished some old wars. Remember when the Democrats and my Republican opponents would often look at me during the debates or whatever and they’d say: ‘No, no, he’s going to bring us into world war III.’ Because it’s a personality type… No, I had the personality type that kept us out of wars because people knew that they weren’t going to mess around here. That’s why I rebuilt our military. We were strong. We were safe.”
August 20, 2020
“Remember we’re going to be in war with North Korea? Remember? It’s going to be a war? Right, congressman?” Trump asked while addressing a rally in Old Forge, Pennsylania. “No, it would have been a war if you had Hillary Clinton. Would’ve been a war if Obama were allowed to stay any longer. He thought there was going to be a war.”
Story continues below this ad
He emphasised that he kept the US out of new wars. “Everyone said: ‘Oh, Trump, it’s his – he’ll be in a war his first week.’ Instead of that, I got you out of wars.”
February 13, 2016
Even before his first tenure as the US President, Trump made anti-war statements. During a debate with Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, in South Carolina, he criticised his brother president George W Bush, who launched war across Afghanistan and Iraq after the 9/11 attacks.
“Obviously – the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right? Now, you can take it any way you want… The war in Iraq, we spent $2tn, thousands of lives, we don’t even have it. Iran is taking over Iraq with the second-largest oil reserves in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake. So George Bush made a mistake… We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq.”
— with inputs from The Guardian
