Donald Trump delivered a speech on education Thursday, but before he got around to talking about those ogres called union teachers working in the dungeons of public schools, he had to stop for an opening statement.
Trump turned into a gulping, paper-shuffling mess as he struggled to throw a fresh coat of paint on his badly worn “I was always against the war in Iraq” story. Obviously fuddled, Trump claimed again and again that he had opposed the war and predicted that it would destabilize the Middle East. He dismissed the Howard Stern interview where he’d given an “yeah, I guess so” to the war question as happening far before things got serious, then dipped into his Esquire interview for long quotes which he said came “right after the war began.”
Except, exactly none of that is true.
Jan. 28, 2003: Trump says he expects to hear “a lot of talk about Iraq and the problems,” and the economy. He urges Bush to make a decision on Iraq. “Either you attack or you don’t attack,” he says. …
March 19, 2003: President George W. Bush announces … war with Iraq has started.
March 21, 2003: Trump says the war “looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint,” and he predicts the market will “go up like a rocket” after the war.
To this point, there’s not a single hint of opposition from Trump.
Just four days later, Trump switched from “up like a rocket” to “the war is a mess.” Why? Not because of the war. Because of the stock market.
A friendly fire incident that downed a British plane caused a market decline.
... Trump’s remarks were in the context of the war’s impact on the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 235 points the day after the war, but it dropped 307 points a day after the friendly fire incident.
At that point Trump wasn’t commenting on the war, but on the war’s effect on the market. It’s a year after the Stern interview, and six months after the start of the war, that Trump first expresses real doubt.
September 11, 2003: It wasn’t a mistake to fight terrorism and fight it hard, and I guess maybe if I had to do it, I would have fought terrorism but not necessarily Iraq.
That’s hardly a position of being solidly against the war, and certainly there’s none of Trump’s “prediction” that it would destabilize the Middle East. Three months later, Trump talks about “unpleasant surprises” in Iraq, again indicating that while he may be souring on the war, it’s for reasons that he didn’t anticipate.
The Esquire interview didn’t come until 15 months after the start of the war. Hardly “right after” as Trump said multiple times in his speech. In fact the Howard Stern talk that Trump waved off as “far before” the start of the war, is actually months closer to when the war started than his appearance in Esquire. It’s in this article that Trump finally says ...
Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we're in. I would never have handled it that way.
Which is still far from a full-throated declaration that Trump wouldn’t have gone into Iraq.
Why would Trump have changed his mind by that point? Well, He wasn't exactly a leader. By the time Trump gave his interview in 2004, Gallup shows that over half of Americans thought sending troops into Iraq had been a mistake.
Donald Trump wasn’t a leader who predicted bad events in Iraq. Donald Trump was a follower who drifted along with public opiniont. In fact, the only prediction Donald Trump made about the war was that the market would “go up like a rocket.”
When the majority of Americans were for going in, Trump was for going in. When public opinion turned against the war and the market failed to “rocket” as he had predicted, Trump turned with the majority sentiment, not in advance of it.
But Trump did say something else of interest in that Esquire interview.
I would have been tougher on terrorism. Bin Laden would have been caught long ago.
Only Trump doesn’t say how he would have done that. Which is typical Trump—all chest-thumping, no plans.
And when it comes to Iraq, like so many other topics, no truth.