CLEVELAND _ Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Thursday he was always opposed to the Iraq War, an unsubstantiated claim that is drawing renewed attacks from Democrats.
"I opposed going in, despite the media saying, 'Oh, no,'" Trump said in Cleveland a day after he and Democrat Hillary Clinton took turns in a televised forum on military issues to argue their cases for becoming the next U.S. commander in chief. "I was opposed to the war from the beginning."
"I see the lies last night: 'Donald Trump was in favor of the war in Iraq,'" Trump said before turning to his remarks about education policy. "That's why I had to do this, because the media is so dishonest."
Clinton said Wednesday she has "taken responsibility" for her decision to vote for the 2003 Iraq invasion when she was a U.S. senator. "My opponent was for the war in Iraq. You can go back and look at the record. He refused to take responsibility for his support. That is a judgment issue."
When radio host Howard Stern asked Trump in September 2002 whether he supported war with Iraq, Trump said, "Yeah, I guess so."
In an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News in January 2003, Trump said of President George W. Bush, "Well, he has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps, because perhaps shouldn't be doing it yet and perhaps we should be waiting for the United Nations, you know.
"I think the economy is a much bigger problem as far as the president is concerned," he said.
In a story published in Esquire magazine in 2004, after the invasion, Trump said, "Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we're in. I would never have handled it that way."
PolitiFact, a nonpartisan fact-checking website, rated Trump's claim about always opposing the war as false based on those interviews. Another site, FactCheck.org, rated the claim as having "no evidence."
