BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott report that—contrary to Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s claims—Trump actually supported the Iraq war in 2002:
In debates and his stump speeches, Trump frequently portrays opposition to the Iraq war as his top qualification to be commander-in-chief. In the February 13 GOP debate, Trump said:
In the last GOP debate, Trump also claimed that President George W. Bush knowingly lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to launch the war. That popular left-wing conspiracy theory, like Trump’s claim he opposed the war, has no basis in fact.
At a CNN town hall Thursday night, moderator Anderson Cooper asked Trump about the BuzzFeed report. Here is Trump’s response:
“I could have said that. Nobody asked me — I wasn’t a politician. It was probably the first time anybody asked me that question. But by the time the war started — that was quite a bit before the war — by the time the war started, I was against the war. And there were articles, there are headlines in 2003, 2004 that I was totally against the war. And actually a couple of people in your world, in terms of the pundits, said, you know, there’s definite proof in 2003, 2004 Trump was against it.”
