CNN has given warmongering Donald Trump a brutal reality check.
The self-described peace president, 80, rose to power on a platform of America First isolationism, pledging to keep the U.S. out of other countries’ problems and focus on improving the lives of working Americans.
But a year and a half on from his inauguration, Trump is ramping up another round of his war on Iran, putting American lives at risk in the Middle East and spending billions of dollars on a conflict with no end in sight.
Evidence of Trump’s broken promise about the war is in plentiful supply, and late Monday CNN cobbled together a supercut of some of the many times he had decried violent conflict and promised to put America first, stretching from 2016 all the way to after the war on Iran had begun.
The cut, aired by CNN’s chief legal analyst and anchor Laura Coates, showed Trump in 2016 promising that “war and aggression will not be my first instinct.”
It also showed him in 2020 claiming, “We are ending the era of endless wars.” And in 2024 promising, “I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”
In January last year, the month of his second inauguration, he claimed: “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps, most importantly, by the wars we never get into.”
For much of his second term, Trump appeared to take that final measure of success very seriously, bragging about solving a litany of conflicts around the world and claiming in August to have “ended 8 wars in just 8 months.”
Among them is the still-active conflict between Israel and Hamas. There was also Israel and Iran, which is now live again as part of Trump’s wider conflict, but with American troops caught up in it.
He also claimed to have ended a conflict between Pakistan and India, a claim furiously rejected by New Delhi.
Trump also claimed to have sorted out fighting between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, despite hundreds of people being killed afterward, Al Jazeera reports.
He also said he had solved the conflict between Thailand and Cambodia and Armenia and Azerbaijan, despite no major fighting having taken place between the latter since 2023. Also on the list were Egypt and Ethiopia, where there was no war, only tensions over a dam, as well as Serbia and Kosovo, which also had not seen direct violent hostility.
CNN’s cut then jumped to Feb. 28 of this year, the night the U.S. first rained bombs down on Iran.
“A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran,” Trump said.
“I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion,” he said in the next clip from March 9.
It then jumped to his infamous June 7 Meet the Press appearance, where Trump was challenged over the war in Iran becoming a “quagmire.”
Sitting in front of a tractor in a barn in torrential rain, Trump said, “It’s not a quagmire; I just wiped out the military… we’re almost finished.”
This week, Iran claims to have struck Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, as well as two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
Three U.S. service members were killed in the renewed fighting, and around 100 others wounded, the BBC reports.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also claimed to have “attacked and destroyed the central data infrastructure of the American company Amazon in Bahrain with several cruise missiles.”
Meanwhile, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country is now locked into a “full-scale war” with the U.S.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
