Trump Denies That He Promised “No More Wars,” Says Iran Won’t Be “Quagmire”

President Donald Trump now denies that he repeatedly promised during his two presidential campaigns that he would not involve the United States in pointless foreign wars.

During an interview with Meet the Press hostess Kristen Welker, Trump claimed that he did not “guarantee no war.”

Instead, he said he meant that he would not fight “endless wars.”

The two also discussed the economy and the price of gasoline, but after far-left Welker and Trump squabbled about crooked elections, Trump ended the interview. 

Welker: You Promised No More Wars

Welker opened the interview by noting that Iran retaliated against American regional allies for U.S. air strikes, and asked whether the United States is at war with Iran.

“Well, they’ve been largely decapitated. And I call it a military exercise because people would rather have it called that,” Trump said:

It’s not a big war for us. It’s not. We have the most powerful military in the world. I built it, frankly. I built it in my first four years. And I’m using it a little bit in my second four years. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their anti-aircraft is gone. They might’ve built it up a little bit over the last four weeks during this little ceasefire that we did at the request of some very good people, very, very fine people from — actually from numerous places, as you know. You know, there are a lot of people involved. But from Pakistan in particular, the field marshal and the prime minister. And we’re very close to having a deal. And if we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it one way or the other. Either way, we win.

The two bantered about the definition of war, and whether Trump will bring home the American troops now deployed to the region. Trump also told Welker he would happily meet with Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike.

But Welker finally turned to what must have been an unwelcome question. “One of your consistent campaign promises was no new wars, going all the way back to 2015,” she said. “Did you break that promise to the American people?”

“No,” Trump replied.

“I had to stop a country, very powerful, very dangerous country, from having a nuclear weapon because they’d use it,” he continued:

They’d blow up the world. They’d blow up the Middle East. They’d blow up Israel. They’d come here. They’d blow up Europe. They’re nuts, okay? They’re crazy people. I deal with them. And very high-strung people. Little crazy. And — I get along with them. I like them. But you don’t want to let them have a nuclear weapon. And I’m doing the world a service, but I’m doing our country a service. You know, it’s America first. I’m doing our country a service. 

Rain delayed the broadcast for five minutes, then Welker continued: “So you’re saying you didn’t break your promise. And yet, Mr. President, in your first term, you held to that promise and it was so fundamental to who you were as a candidate, to a first-term president. What changed, because you insisted ‘no new wars’?”

Trump: Well, well. First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world? I built our military. I inherited a terrible military. We had no equipment. We had nothing. I built a tremendous military. Biden gave a lot of it away, but it’s still a relatively small portion compared to what I built.

Welker: But you said it over and over again, Mr. President.

Trump: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why would I build a military — Now, I didn’t want to use this, but I’m doing you and everybody else a big favor. In the midst of the greatest stock market in history, in the midst of the most successful country because, as you know, in the last term, we were a dead country, Kristen. I know you, you’re a big liberal, a big progressive.

Welker falsely claimed that “I’m just a journalist.”

Then Trump claimed that the United States was a “dead country” until his reelection. Now, he said, “we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.”

“The reason I won an election is people have confidence in me,” Trump continued:

I have good judgment. I had to make a judgment. Do I want to go along and have a country that’s doing really well, but somebody is going to try and kill us? Or do I want to put out that horrible threat? And I did. It put it out. I put it out for many, many years. Now, I’m going to put it out permanently. I’m going to do it either through negotiation, where we’re very close to a deal, or I’m going to blow the hell out of them, to be honest with you. And it’s going to be very easy for me to do that. That’s actually the easier path. So when you say I promised, 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. Much of it has been under the form — a pretty good form of ceasefire. The blockade has been amazing.

Welker also pressed Trump on his claim during the 2016 presidential campaign that the Middle East is a “quagmire.”

“It is,” he said. But he also insisted that won’t be the case with the U.S. war against Iran because “we’re not going to be there.”

“It’s not a quagmire,” Trump said.

Campaign Promises

Trump’s denial that he broke a key campaign promise quickly went viral on social media … accompanied by video that recorded the many times he said “no new wars” or “no more wars.” 

“Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all,” he said at a campaign rally.

He also called himself the “candidate of peace.”

Also making that promise were Trump’s campaign surrogates, notably former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who quit her post, she said, because her husband has bone cancer.

On October 28, 2024, Gabbard said voting for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris was voting for war. Not so with Trump.

“A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for Dick Cheney and a vote for war, war and more war,” she said:

A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to end wars, not start them. We are at a historic crossroads. Our God-given rights are under attack. Now is the time for us to stand together, for love of country, and for Donald Trump to get us back on the path to peace, freedom, and prosperity.

Vice President J.D. Vance, who opposed going to war in Iran in 2024 as being against American interests, said much the same thing:

If you want your kid to go and fight in some stupid globalist war, vote for Joe Biden. If you want to send American Marines and soldiers to fight only when we have to, vote for Donald Trump.