BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) – President Donald 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.
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.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly cast his Democratic opponents as warmongers and said he was a president who started “no new wars” and would bring an era of peace.
But Trump said in the NBC interview, taped Friday in Wisconsin, that as a candidate, “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,” he said of the war with Iran, which began Feb. 28.
Trump said he was “doing the world a service” and “doing our country a service” because he had to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon. But elsewhere in the interview, Trump repeated a contradictory message where he said U.S. strikes last year “obliterated” Iranian nuclear sites.
He also defended his decision in his first term to withdraw from Democratic President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, an agreement he has heavily criticized, without negotiating the “better deal” he has promised to reach.
“It takes years to do these things,” Trump said.
California’s notoriously prolonged vote count has been a magnet for election conspiracy theories, and Trump since Tuesday’s election has claimed without evidence that Democrats are rigging the election. The Trump-appointed top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles said Friday that his office had opened “multiple election fraud investigations.”
Late-tallied Democratic-leaning mail ballots have eaten into the vote totals for Trump’s preferred candidates for governor and Los Angeles mayor. While Trump has often said that changes to vote totals as late ballots are counted are a sign of fraud, they are merely a reflection of a slow vote-counting process.
Trump in the interview kept claiming that it was a sign of “cheating” and “a rigged election,” and grew increasingly frustrated as Welker pressed him for evidence to support that.
“All I have to do is look. All I have to do is look,” Trump said.
“But that’s not evidence,” Welker responded.
“And I listen. And I listen to people. And let’s see what happens,” Trump replied.
Trump defended plans that his Department of Justice said it has now abandoned to create a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” as part of a settlement to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday that the department was scrapping the plan. That announcement came after the plan was paused by a judge and after both Democrats and some Republicans said they were concerned about the fund’s lack of oversight and the possibility of payouts being made to participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
Trump told NBC he thought the fund was “a great idea” and that he would be “disappointed” if it were not approved.
When asked if he thought people who attacked police officers on Jan. 6 should get a payout, Trump said, “I wouldn’t be inclined to say so, but I have to see it.” He then began making unfounded and false claims about riot and those who stormed the Capitol. Trump granted a sweeping pardon on his first day back in office in January 2025 to the more than 1,500 people prosecuted over Jan. 6.
The NBC interview was conducted in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, before Trump was set to speak at a roundtable event with farmers. The interview was repeatedly interrupted as waves of heavy rain fell on the metal roof of the barn where the taping took place, making it difficult at times to hear.
At the end, Welker pressed Trump on the settlement fund and his claims about the California election. Trump raised his voice and began calling Welker and the media “crooked,” attacking her credibility and complaining about what he called “the fake, dirty press.”
As Welker tried to switch subjects, Trump continued on and there was cross talk between the two. Trump ended the interview, saying said, “Let’s call it quits.” He took off his microphone, telling Welker, “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.” He said he had given the interview enough time, stood up and walked away.
Welker said during the broadcast that she spoke to Trump on Saturday and he agreed the rain had caused complications and said he would do another interview in the future.
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