On the second day of the Iraq War in 2003, Donald Trump said that the effort begun by President George W. Bush appeared to be "a tremendous success from a military standpoint."
Trump, now the Republican presidential front-runner, told Neil Cavuto on Fox Business Channel that the conflict would help Wall Street.
"Wall Street's waiting to see what happens, but even before the fact they're obviously taking it a little bit for granted — and it looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint, and I think this is really nothing compared to what you're gonna see after the war is over," Trump said,
BuzzFeed News reports.
BuzzFeed obtained audio of the telephone interview, from March 21, 2003, through Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003, ending that May 1.
"Wall Street’s just gonna go up like a rocket, even beyond, and it’s gonna continue and, you know, we have a strong and powerful country and let’s hope it all works out," Trump said.
He added that he believed that any international objections to the war would not endanger American's economy.
"I guess the French never liked us much, except when we’re bailing them out, you know, to be totally honest with you," he told Cavuto. "But certainly, we’re going to have to work on our public relations, because there’s no question that there are a lot of countries in the world right now that aren’t too fond of us — but I think that can be solved and probably pretty quickly."
The developer added that, "the main thing is to get the war over with and just make it a tremendously successful campaign — and it’ll be very interesting to see what kind of weapons they uncover."
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