Howard Stern Reveals: Trump Was for Iraq War Before He Was Against It

Howard Stern on March 2, 2015 in Newark, New Jersey. Image by Getty Images

By Nathan Guttman September 8, 2016

Donald Trump said on national TV Thursday night that he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, but luckily, everyone’s favorite shock jock Howard Stern’s 14-year-old- interview with the Donald was readily available to debunk the claim.

Speaking on NBC’s Commander in Chief Forum held in New York, Trump insisted that he had never supported the war in Iraq. “I was totally against the war in Iraq. You can look at Esquire magazine from ’04. You can look at before that,” Trump said, to the surprise of most pundits and fact checkers. NBC host Matt Lauer let the statement pass, either not knowing it was false or because he didn’t want to jeopardize the rest of the conversation by irritating Trump.

Trump pointed to his 2004 interview in which he did speak out against the war, but by then, many other supporters came around to the same conclusion. However, in September 2002, Trump phoned into Howard Stern’s radio show to discuss the one-year anniversary of the terror attacks on New York and got a chance to express his views on the idea of launching a war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

“Are you for invading Iraq?” Stern asked.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Trump said. “You know, I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

To be sure, this wasn’t the main topic of the interview. In fact, it came after the Jewish radio host discussed the city’s housing market with Trump and then raised what Stern saw as the most burning issue of the time:

“Probably the most important question I can ask on a day like today is where is Melania and is she naked?” Sten asked. Trump responded that his wife was at home and that he’s “not 100% sure” whether she was dressed or not.

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO