Republican primary front-runner Donald Trump claimed on the second day of Operation Iraqi Freedom that it appeared to be “a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”
{mosads}Speaking to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on March 21, 2003, Trump predicted the war would continue to bolster Wall Street.
“Well, I think Wall Street’s waiting to see what happens, but even before the fact they’re obviously taking it a little bit for granted, and it looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint, and I think this is really nothing compared to what you’re gonna see after the war is over,” Trump said, as first reported by BuzzFeed News.
The billionaire businessman said he was optimistic that international protests to the war would not harm the U.S. economy.
“Well, I guess the French never liked us much except when we’re bailing them out, you know, to be totally honest with you,” he said. “But certainly we’re going to have to work on our public relations, because there’s no question that there are a lot of countries in the world right now that aren’t too fond of us, but I think that can be solved and probably pretty quickly.”
Trump also speculated in the interview as to what kinds of weapons of mass destruction the Iraqi regime was hiding.
“The main thing is to get the war over with and just make it a tremendously successful campaign, and it’ll be very interesting to see what kind of weapons they uncover,” he said.
Trump has made his prescient opposition to the Iraq War a central talking point on the campaign trail.
After audio was uncovered from 2002 in which he expressed support for the invasion, Trump said by the time the war started, he was against it.
He has also accused former President George W. Bush, brother of primary rival Jeb Bush, of lying about the reasons for the invasion.