Trump denies he promised not to start new wars

WASHINGTON, Jun 07 (APP): US President Donald Trump has flatly denied that he campaigned on avoiding “endless” wars, as he seeks to reach a deal to end conflict with Iran.

“I didn’t guarantee no war,” Trump said at NBC-TV’s pogramme “Meet the Press,” which was taped during his trip to Wisconsin on Friday. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”

Speaking about the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, he added: “So when you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months.”

Since he launched his first bid for the presidency in 2015, though, the president has criticized lengthy U.S. wars in the Middle East. During a February 2016 debate with his Republican opponents on CBS-TV, Trump blasted former President George W. Bush for the war in Iraq.

“We spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, we don’t even have it,” he said. “Iran is taking over Iraq, with the second-largest oil reserves in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake.”

Trump added, “We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.”

More than eight years later, Trump pledged that if elected again, the “years of war, weakness and chaos” would end.

“I could stop wars with a telephone call,” he said at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

Trump’s biography on the White House’s website also lists “putting a stop to endless wars” as one of his top priorities.

But before, during and between his two terms in office, the president has also said that Tehran cannot have a nuclear weapon — the justification he used to launch the war in Iran.

“Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said at a rally two days before Election Day in 2024. “Nuclear weapons are the greatest single threat [not just] to our country, but to the entire world.”