The claim

“I’m the only one on this stage that said – do not go into Iraq. Do not attack Iraq.”
Donald Trump, 13 February 2016

The background

The US media’s army of fact-checkers have been having something of a field day with Donald J Trump since he decided to run for president.

As we found in a previous post, the tycoon has been called out for bending the truth on a range of topics from crime statistics to immigration, Osama bin Laden’s birth certificate and Muslims celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Not that these constant accusations of factual inaccuracy and selective memory seem to be hurting The Donald’s bid to become the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. He’s still the front-runner, at time of writing.

The latest claim comes from Saturday’s Republican presidential debate, in which Trump repeated the idea that he had opposed George W Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq all along.

The analysis

Trump’s oft-repeated position is that he was a lone voice of dissent while America prepared for the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in March 2003.

But fact-checkers have failed to find any evidence of him expressing serious opposition around the time of the outbreak of war.

Politifact have dug out an interview Trump did with Fox News on 28 January 2003, when he was questioned about President Bush’s foreign policy.

Trump said: “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.

“He’s under a lot of pressure. I think he’s doing a very good job. But, of course, if you look at the polls, a lot of people are getting a little tired. I think the Iraqi situation is a problem. And I think the economy is a much bigger problem as far as the president is concerned.”

That doesn’t sound like: “Do not attack Iraq.”

A week after the invasion began, the property tycoon was interviewed while attending the Oscars party and appeared to offer some criticism on the handling of the war, saying: “If they keep fighting it the way they did today, they’re going to have a real problem.”

By 2004, it’s true that Trump had become an outspoken critic of the US-led invasion, giving an interview with Esquire magazine in which he said: “Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we’re in. I would never have handled it that way.”

But this was July 2004, more than a year after the invasion, and nearly two years after the Congressional vote that authorise the use of force in Iraq.

By this time, the insurgency in Iraq was gathering pace, and criticism of the US-led coalition’s efforts had become fairly widespread.

Doubling down

Trump has been repeatedly challenged by American journalists to produce some evidence of early opposition to the war.

He has been fairly bullish, saying: “If you look at 2003, there are articles. If you look at 2004, there are articles.”

At the second presidential debate in September last year, he said: “You can check it out, check out — I’ll give you 25 different stories.”

But no one has been able to find any of these articles.

Curiously, having previously said that his opposition to the Iraq War was “loud and clear” and widely reported by the media, Trump offered a different explanation in a recent interview: “Don’t forget, I wasn’t a politician so people didn’t write everything I said.”

White House claims

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has also looked at Trump’s claims that the Bush-era White House tried to shut down his dissent on Iraq.

In a Fox News interview last year, he said: “I was visited by people from the White House asking me to – sort of – could I be silenced.”

And in the second debate he claimed: “A delegation was sent to my office to see me because I was so vocal about it.”

The Post approached Trump’s campaign team for some evidence that this approach from the White House ever took place, but none was forthcoming.

The fact-checkers also reached out to a dozen of President Bush’s former aides about the claim. None of them “could recall a meeting with Trump, concerns about his opposition, or even Trump’s views being on their radar prior to the Esquire article”.

The verdict

We’ve been here before: Trump is fond of suggesting that he pointed out trends that others had not yet spotted.

He has previously claimed he predicted the rise of Osama bin Laden two years before the 9/11 attacks and told the US government: “You better take him out.”

It’s true that Trump mentioned the Bin Laden in his 2000 book The America We Deserve, but there was no mention of “taking out” the al-Qaeda leader.

Once again, Trump’s memory appears to be defective on Iraq.