Trump is dismissing the idea that launching the war with Iran this year betrayed his refrain of “No new wars” that he made repeatedly as he campaigned again for the White House.
Trump, in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said he “didn’t guarantee” there would be no wars if he were back in office.
“First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?” Trump said.
It came just hours before Israel and Iran traded fire in retaliatory strikes that threatened to drag the wider Middle East back into a full-scale regional war. It was the first exchange of fire since an April 8 ceasefire was reached.
Trump also defended plans for a now-scrapped $1.8 billion fund that would have compensated allies of the Republican president and he repeated his baseless claims of mass fraud in California’s drawn-out vote count from Tuesday’s primary. He ended the interview abruptly when he became frustrated with pushback from NBC’s Kristen Welker.
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