Remember when the GOP debate stage was all chock full of eager candidates?
Yeah, me, too.
Back in February there was a debate among the Republicans. And Donald J. Trump said this:
“I’m the only one on this stage that said, ‘Do not go into Iraq. Do not attack Iraq,’ ” Trump said. “Nobody else on this stage said that. And I said it loud and strong. And I was in the private sector. I wasn’t a politician, fortunately. But I said it, and I said it loud and clear, ‘You’ll destabilize the Middle East.’ “
That would have been an interesting position for Trump to have held at the time.
Except that it is a blatant lie.
He never said that. He never opposed the Iraq War. A number of news sources have tried to find evidence that Trump’s big boast was actually true.
Buzzfeed, for one, has actually found an audio recording of Trump’s statements about the war made on Sept. 11, 2002, 6 months before the invasion. In an interview with Howard Stern, Trump was asked if he agreed with the invasion. His answer:
“Yeah, I guess so.”
No firm opposition, no “Do not go in.”
Buzzfeed went on to call out the media on the way that it is letting Trump simply repeat and get away with this lie. The most outrageous instance of media acceptance came in an article by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. The article was titled, “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk.” It refered directly to the allegedly different views of the two likely Presidential candidates over the Iraq War. Dowd wrote:
“The prime example of commander-in-chief judgment Trump offers is the fact that, like Obama, he thought the invasion of Iraq was a stupid idea.”
Except that he didn’t.
In fact, on the first day of the war, Trump said that it seemed to be a “tremendous success from a military standpoint.” He predicted that the war would be a huge boon to Wall Street.
He lied. Over and over, Trump has lied about opposing the War in Iraq. The evidence is there.
Featured image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr. Available through a Creative Commons license 2.0
