Video of 2016 GOP Debate Shows Trump Saying That Bush 43 Should Have Been Impeached for Iraq War

A viral video on X demonstrates just how much President Donald Trump has changed on the subject of foreign wars since he first campaigned for the White House in 2016.

The video, which has notched almost 1.5 million views, shows then-candidate Trump denouncing former President George W. Bush for the war in Iraq.

Bush, he said, erred greatly, and those who pushed the war lied about then-dictator Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. Democrats should have impeached the 43rd POTUS, he said.

The video brings to mind Trump’s myriad false claims about the war he started with Iran on behalf of Israel.

The Question

The video comes from the GOP primary debate in South Carolina. Six candidates were on stage: Trump, GOP Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, former Florida GOP Governor Jeb Bush, and then-GOP Governor John Kasich of Ohio.

When debate moderator John Dickerson asked what Trump would ask on his first day in the White House Situation Room, Trump denounced then-President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, then rambled toward Iraq:

We have to rebuild our country. But we have — I’m the only one on the stage that said, “Do not go into Iraq. Do not attack Iraq.” Nobody else on this stage said that. And I said it loud and strong. And I was in the private sector. I wasn’t a politician, fortunately. But I said it. And I said it loud and clear. “You’ll destabilize the Middle East.”

But later, Dickerson zeroed in on Trump’s complaint that Democrats hadn’t impeached Bush 43 for the war in Iraq. He read Trump’s words back to him.

“On Monday, George W. Bush will campaign in South Carolina for his brother,” Dickerson said:

As you said tonight, and you’ve often said, the Iraq War and your opposition to it was a sign of your good judgment. In 2008, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer talking about President George W. Bush’s conduct through the war, you said you were surprised that Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi didn’t try to impeach him. You said, quote, “Which personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing” — close quote. When you were asked what you meant by that, you said, “For the war, for the war. He lied, he got us into the war with lies.” Do you still believe President Bush … should’ve been impeached?

After wandering around a bit, and claiming Jeb Bush had waffled on the question, Trump got around to answering.

“The war in Iraq, we spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, we don’t even have it. Iran is taking over Iraq with the second-largest oil reserves in the world,” Trump said:

Obviously it was a mistake. So George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We shoulda never been in Iraq. … They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.

Trump and Iran’s Nukes

Now Trump faces the same trouble as Bush. He started a war based on the false claims that Iran would soon have a nuclear weapon and that the Iranian Islamic regime would collapse if attacked by us, which intelligence agencies said wasn’t true.

For instance, after Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that Iran’s nuclear facilities “have been destroyed” and would require “years” to rebuild.

CIA chief John Ratcliffe said much the same thing.

The next day, the White House published a news release, “Experts Agree: Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated.” It cited other top officials who echoed Gabbard and Ratcliffe.

Yet when President Trump launched the war against Iran on February 28 of this year, he cited Iran’s nuclear facilities as a reason for the attack. So also did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

(Even before Midnight Hammer, significantly, the U.S. intelligence community declared that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.)

President Trump claimed that the facilities were “completely and totally obliterated.”

“New intelligence confirms what @POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed,” Gabbard wrote on X:

If the Iranians chose to rebuild, they would have to rebuild all three facilities (Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan) entirely, which would likely take years to do. 

Said Ratcliffe the same day:

The CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes. This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.

On June 26, the White House published a compilation of commentary from the experts who said Iran’s nuclear capability was, as a practical matter, gone.

Even the Israelis agreed that the facilities were, at the least, “set back many years.”

On March 18 of this year, Gabbard repeated her assessment before the U.S. Senate intelligence committee.

“As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated,” she said:

There has been no efforts [sic] since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability. The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement. We continue to monitor for any early indicators on what position the current or any new leadership in Iran will take with regard to authorizing a nuclear weapons program.

So on the one hand Trump has repeatedly said that he began the war to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon that they couldn’t have been developing because Operation Midnight Hammer destroyed that capability, at least for several years.

Regime Change

On the other hand, Trump erroneously believed he could topple the Iranian regime, as The New York Times reported, because he listened to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Situation Room briefing on February 11. Netanyahu told Trump that regime change would, in the words of those who advocated attacking Iraq in 2003, be a “cakewalk.”

That was false. U.S. intelligence called the idea “farcical.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it “bullsh*t.”

Gabbard told Trump that “killing Iran’s supreme leader would likely usher in a more hard-line regime open to acquiring nuclear weapons,” as The Wall Street Journal reported.

So Trump ignored his own top officials in claiming Iran that would quickly develop a nuclear weapon and that the regime would collapse after an attack on the country.

Maybe, as Trump said of Bush’s going to war against Iraq, starting the war against Iran was a “mistake” that will “destabilize the Middle East.”

The question is, Will Democrats impeach Trump if they seize control of Capitol Hill in November?