Donald Trump dismisses idea that Iran betrays his ‘no new wars’ campaign message

Published 8 June 2026 · us

President Donald Trump is dismissing the idea that launching the war with Iran this year betrayed his refrain of “no new wars” that he made

President Donald Trump is dismissing the idea that launching the war with Iran this year betrayed his refrain of “no new wars” that he made repeatedly as he campaigned again for the White House. Also read | Trump asks Netanyahu not to strike Iran; says “very close” to peace deal Trump, in an interview that aired Sunday (June 7, 2026) on NBC, said he “didn't guarantee” there would be no wars if he were back in office. "First of all, I didn't guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?" Mr. Trump said. Trump also defended plans for a now-scrapped $1.8 billion fund that would have compensated allies of the Republican President, and he repeated his baseless claims of mass fraud in California's drawn-out vote count from Tuesday's (June 2, 2026) primary. He ended the interview abruptly when he became frustrated with pushback from NBC's Kristen Welker. ‘Iran is not an endless war’ In his 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly cast his Democratic opponents as warmongers and said he was a President who started “no new wars" and would bring an era of peace. But Mr. Trump said in the NBC interview, taped Friday (June 5, 2026) in Wisconsin, that as a candidate, “I didn't promise anything.” “I don't like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We've been doing this for three months,” he said of the war with Iran, which began on February 28.

Trump said he was “doing the world a service” and “doing our country a service” because he had to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon. But elsewhere in the interview, Mr. Trump repeated a contradictory message where he said U.S. strikes last year “obliterated” Iranian nuclear sites. He also defended his decision in his first term to withdraw from Democratic President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, an agreement he has heavily criticized, without negotiating the “better deal” he has promised to reach. “It takes years to do these things,” Mr. Trump said. Trump without evidence claims fraud in California vote California's notoriously prolonged vote count has been a magnet for election conspiracy theories, and Mr. Trump, since Tuesday's (June 2, 2026) election, has claimed without evidence that Democrats are rigging the election. The Trump-appointed top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles said Friday (June 5, 2026) that his office had opened “multiple election fraud investigations.” Late-tallied Democratic-leaning mail ballots have eaten into the vote totals for Mr. Trump's preferred candidates for Governor and Los Angeles Mayor. While Mr. Trump has often said that changes to vote totals as late ballots are counted are a sign of fraud, they are merely a reflection of a slow vote-counting process. Trump, in the interview, kept claiming that it was a sign of “cheating” and “a rigged election," and grew increasingly frustrated as Ms. Welker pressed him for evidence to support that.