President Donald Trump on Friday admitted during his keynote address at the Future Investment Initiative Priority Summit in Miami that there are “legal reasons” for his minimizing rhetoric on the Iran War, stating, “We call it a military operation. We don’t call it a war.”
Minutes later, however, Trump referred to it as a “war” himself, before making a correction.
“See, I get into a war — of course, they call it a war, I call it a military conflict,” Trump said Friday. “But there’s a legal reason for that.”
He delved into more detail about the terminology later in his speech.
“I said, ‘Look, you know, we have a thing called a war,’ or as they would rather say, a military operation. It’s for legal reasons,” said Trump. “I say ‘military’ because as a military operation, I don’t need any approvals. As a war, you’re supposed to get approval from Congress. Something like that.”
He also admitted being “very disappointed” that NATO “didn’t come to our aid,” only to claim he didn’t “try too hard” to get its help because he wanted to “prove a point.”
