President Donald Trump on Monday delivered a slew of lies during an hour-and-a-half-long White House press conference about his escalating war on Iran, CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale said.
“President Trump uttered numerous false claims, including long-debunked lies, at his press conference today – in addition to several very-much-uncorroborated claims, like the one about how every living former president is saying ‘to their friends’ that the US should’ve started this war long ago,” Dale wrote Monday on X.
Trump claimed that Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear weapon “should have been handled by seven presidents” of the past — which would include Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
He then claimed “every one of them” is now admitting to their friends that “we should have done this.” Reagan and H.W. Bush are dead, and Trump himself attended the funeral of H.W. Bush.
Trump correctly said Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani was killed on his orders in 2020, but added, “I did one other, but this one was not picked up: Osama bin Laden. If you read my book, I said, ‘You got to take him out,’ one year before the World Trade Center came down.”
Dale expounded on his initial X post with a lengthier analysis on the CNN website.
He noted Trump’s 2000 book, “The America We Deserve,” featured only one mention of the terrorist and didn’t include “any advice about how to deal with” or what to actually “do” about him. Bin Laden was killed in a 2011 U.S. military operation during the Obama administration.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press
Trump made numerous other false claims Monday about his ongoing war and past conflicts.
Despite acknowledging to reporters that Iran downed an F-15 fighter jet last week and Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirming they also shot down an A-10 aircraft, Trump falsely claimed, “The only planes, really, that we lost were — friendly fire, they call it.”
“Trump repeated his familiar false claim that ‘I’ve ended eight wars,’” Dale continued. “As we’ve repeatedly noted, his list includes two situations that were never actually wars (a diplomatic dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia and a mystery situation between Serbia and Kosovo) and at least one war that didn’t actually end.”
Dale noted that the latter concerns an ongoing conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Trump spent years touting his supposed peace-making successes and campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize before last year’s winner simply gave it to him.
