ABC News(NEW YORK) — Donald Trump has been catching some heat for his characterization of his stance on the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The GOP candidate has been adamant about his early opposition to the invasion, despite some evidence to the contrary.
The controversy got kicked up again on Wednesday when Trump made an appearance on NBC’s Commander-In-Chief Forum and offered up a rebuttal to a criticism being leveled at him by his Democratic opponent in the upcoming election.
“I heard Hillary Clinton say I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq,” Trump told host Matt Lauer. “You can look at Esquire magazine from 2004. You can look at before that. And I was against the war in Iraq, I said it’s going to totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has. It’s been a disastrous war.”
Outlets like Politifact and BuzzFeed News have pointed out in the past that Trump in 2002 expressed tepid approval of the impending U.S. invasion.
In an interview that only briefly touched on the subject, Howard Stern asked Trump “Are you for invading Iraq?”
Trump appears to hesitate, responding, “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.”
Politifact has rated his claim that he “was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war in Iraq, and yes, even before the war ever started,” as false.
BuzzFeed dug up the audio of the Howard Stern interview and posted it back in February. They provide a timeline of his comments on Iraq since then and sum up his shifting position by saying Trump “expressed support for regime change at length in 2000, tepid support for the war in 2002, made both positive and negative comments about it in 2003, and was strongly opposed by 2004.”
Copyright © 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.