Trump makes bizarre claim US invasion of Iraq was 'somewhat pre-nuclear'
President Donald Trump bizarrely appeared to suggest that nuclear weapons didn't exist, or were at least considerably less advanced, at the time the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, in conversation with reporters on the tarmac in New Jersey on Friday.
Trump has reportedly signed off on an attack plan against Iran, but is holding off for two weeks before making a final order.
"Years ago, you were skeptical of a Republican administration that attacked a Middle East country on the idea of questionable intelligence of weapons of mass destruction," a reporter asked him. "How is this moment different with Iran?"
"Well, there were no weapons of mass destruction, I never thought there were," said Trump. "And that was a somewhat pre-nuclear — you know, it was, there was a nuclear age, but nothing like it is today."
It wasn't immediately clear what Trump meant. Nuclear weapons have existed for nearly a century. They were used in the Second World War and the arms race building up the arsenals of superpowers like the United States and Soviet Union to thousands of nuclear weapons was a massive element of the Cold War. The 2003 Iraq invasion was partly justified by unsupported claims that Iraq was concealing a nuclear weapons program.
Moreover, even the claim that Trump was opposed to the 2003 Iraq invasion at the time is not true. He criticized the war in 2004, a year after it began, but expressed support for the idea when asked about it in 2002.