WATCH: Joe Scarborough Grills Trump On His Past Iraq War Views

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

During a town hall moderated by MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” co-host Joe Scarborough quizzed Donald Trump on his past statements about the Iraq War.

Scarborough referenced a book Trump wrote in 2000, in which the real estate mogul discussed weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. According to Buzzfeed News, Trump discussed how Iraq was “developing a nuclear arsenal.”

“We still don’t know what Iraq is up to or whether it has the material to build nuclear weapons,” Trump then wrote, according to Buzzfeed News. “I’m no warmonger. But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion.”

Scarborough confronted Trump about these comments on Wednesday night.

“In 2000, you also said that you thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. What happened between 2000 when you wrote that…” he asked Trump

“So we were told they had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump jumped in to say. “But he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Now, the only question is did the government know he didn’t? Why did they go in — look, Iraq did not knock down and the Iraqis did not knock down the World Trade Center.”

“So we attacked Iraq but they didn’t knock down the World Trade Center. We attacked them for a reason,” Trump responded.

Scarborough pressed Trump further, asking, “Did you believe in 2003 in March when we went to war that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction?”

“I didn’t know,” Trump answered. “If you would have watched you would have probably thought they did but I didn’t know. But the government should have known and they didn’t have. And we attacked a country and destabilized the entire Middle East.”

The MSNBC host then told Trump that “nobody can find” comments made by Trump before the U.S. went to war in Iraq.

“I’m a real estate person, a business person. Nobody cared about my comments,” Trump said in response, adding that in 2003 he said he was against the Iraq War. “I’m the only one that said, ‘Don’t go in.'”

Watch the clip via MSNBC:

Latest Livewire
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: