Call it President Trump’s “credibility gap.” That’s a phrase used for President Lyndon Johnson prevaricating on the Vietnam War. Trump’s gap got wider during his Sunday interview with Kristen Welker on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” held in a Wisconsin barn during a thunderstorm.
Monday marked the 100th day of the war he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched on Iran on Feb. 28.
Welker asked, “Mr. President, one of your consistent campaign promises was no new wars, going all the way back to 2015. Did you break that promise to the American –.”
“No,” he interrupted just as she said, “people.”
He continued, “No. I had to stop a country, very powerful, very dangerous country, from having a nuclear weapon because they’d use it. They’d blow up the world. They’d blow up the Middle East.”
Welker persisted, saying he kept to the promise in his first term and campaigned in 2024 for “no new wars.”
Trump went on in his usual way. But all of us heard him say, over and over again for 10 years, “No new wars.” There are numerous montages on YouTube and X combining his many anti-war statements.
Just one example. In his jubilant Nov. 6, 2024 speech after his reelection victory, he said, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”
That’s the main reason, after Sen. Rand Paul dropped out, I supported Trump from 2016 until he first bombed Iran a year ago.
Think back to 2015. Americans were sick of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, still hot, started by President George W. Bush. His brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, was the early Republican primary favorite. Trump rode his antiwar platform across Jeb’s back, then beat Hillary Clinton. As a U.S. senator from New York, then as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, she backed those wars.
Iran is the first major war Americans did not support. After President George H.W. Bush launched the Gulf War in 1991 against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, his approval ratings surged to 89%. His son, President George W. Bush, surpassed that at 90% approval on Sept. 21-22, 2001. That was after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and as he was preparing to invade Afghanistan.
For Trump, a March 9 Quinnipiac University poll, nine days after the war started, found just 37% job approval and 57% disapproval. Three months later, a June 1 YouGov poll gave him 35% approval and 61% disapproval.
Trump was trained in the 1970s by Roy Cohn, the notorious fixer and mob lawyer, whose motto was, “Always attack. Never apologize.” Trump is unlikely to make a mea culpa the way President Kennedy did in 1961, saying after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, “I am the responsible officer of the government.” Or President Reagan’s 1987 apology over the Iran-Contra scandal, “I was stubborn in my pursuit of a policy that went astray.”
Those were real men.
The good news is, despite the recent tit-for-tat attacks between Iran and Israel, there may be an end in sight for the war. Trump knows, if the war doesn’t end soon, global oil, fertilizer and other commodities shortages will clamp down on the global economy. That would bring a massive Democratic Party victory this November.
There’s also economic pressure for peace before the 250th anniversary of Independence Day.
In the “Meet the Press” interview, he said of the war, “It’s almost complete. As soon as that’s complete, gasoline prices are going to drop like a rock.” He boasted that prices at the pump in Iowa before the war were $1.85 a gallon.
Maybe. In the interview, Welker pressed him for proof of his accusations that elections were “rigged,” especially in California. As rain pounded the roof of the barn, he stormed out, roaring, “A country can never be great with a dishonest press.”
Let’s hope he storms out of his Iran War and brings our troops home.
John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board