What Trump said during the war
The day after the invasion in March 2003,
Trump told Fox: "It looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint."
Trump started publicly expressing negative or skeptical thoughts about the war shortly after it began. He called the war a "mess" in
a brief comment at an Academy Awards after-party later in the week of the invasion. Six months into the war, Trump said, "It wasn't a mistake to fight terrorism and fight it hard, and I guess maybe if I had to do it, I would have fought terrorism but not necessarily Iraq."
Still, Trump did not express definitive opposition in 2003. In a MSNBC appearance in November 2003, he lamented US spending on the war and said that "the question is whether or not we should have been in Iraq in the first place" -- but he continued: "I don't think that this president can do anything about that. He is really -- he is on a course that has to stay."
In December 2003, Trump told Fox that the war had been "tougher than people thought," but he added, "It just seems to be something that, we are there now, we have to stay, we have to win, otherwise we just won't have the same respect."
It wasn't until more than a year after the invasion that Trump conveyed explicit opposition to the war.
He told Stern in April 2004 that "Iraq is a terrible mistake." Trump was
quoted in Esquire magazine in July 2004 lamenting deaths and injuries among Americans and Iraqis, saying, "And it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing!"
Speaking
to CNN's Larry King in December 2004, Trump said, "Hopefully, we'll be getting out." He had become vehement by April 2006,
telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I would do something to get out of that war as quickly as possible."