Dear Commons Community.

President Donald Trump addressed a meeting of Republican donors on Saturday during which he commented that the “invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the single worst decision ever made.”  Trump added that it was like“throwing a big fat brick into a hornet’s nest.” As reported by CNN and The Huffington Post:

“Here we are, like the dummies of the world, because we had bad politicians running our country for a long time,” Trump said. He went on to mock fellow Republican George W. Bush, sarcastically calling him a “real genius” over his decision to invade Iraq.

He also scorned the CIA over its flawed information about Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein harboring weapons of mass destruction.

“That turned out to be wonderful intelligence. Great intelligence agency there,” Trump joked. 

As CNN noted, Trump has used this faulty assessment about the WMDs to question the reliability of the U.S. intelligence community, particularly regarding its conclusions about Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Though Trump repeatedly insisted during his presidential campaign that he’d long been opposed to the Iraq War, even saying in June 2016 that he was among its “earliest” critics, the record suggests otherwise.

In a much-reported exchange with radio host Howard Stern in September 2002, Trump expressed tepid support for the war, saying “Yeah, I guess so” when asked if he supported the impending invasion of Iraq.

In March 2003, one day after the invasion, Trump told Fox News that the conflict appeared to be “a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”

I would remind Trump that there were a lot of news media folks (those he refers to as “fake news”) criticizing the Iraq War decision at the time.  And his favorite news outlet, Fox News, was a big supporter of Bush’s decision.

Tony