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In an interview with Time magazine that was published on Thursday, President Donald Trump reiterated his desire to “annihilate” the people of Iran, and lashed out at the press for attempting to hold him accountable for his promise that the war would only last four weeks.
When asked “why is it taking so long” to end the conflict, Trump defended the length of the war, claiming he now has additional objectives in mind.
“I wanted to go further…. When I said I was going to be there for a short period of time, I was, and then I decided I wanted to go further than that because I didn’t want to have them come back in some different form,” Trump said.
A Time reporter then asked Trump if Americans “misunderstood” him, noting that the public had initially been told the war would last “four to six weeks.” Trump brushed off that concern as manufactured by news media, saying, “No, I think the press fed it to them.”
Trump had indeed vowed that the war would be limited to that time frame, telling The Daily Mail in early March, “It’ll take four weeks — or less.”
Trump didn’t elaborate on his desire to “go further” in his war on Iran. But later in the Time interview, he said it was “possible” that he would “annihilate” Iran in the coming weeks, claiming that doing so would “creat[e] peace in the world.”
Asked whether it would be “peaceful” for him to kill civilians, Trump responded, “With Iran, I don’t think you could ever have peace.”
Trump lashed out at Time reporters near the end of the interview.
“Here we are doing this. You haven’t asked me one fucking positive question,” Trump said. “All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative. Why are you devoting all this time to the White House?”
“I’m just thinking to myself, fake news. … I’m sitting here. I’ve done all this stuff,” he whined.
While Trump blames the media for coverage he dislikes, polling indicates that a majority of Americans disapprove of how he’s handled the war on Iran, and want the war to end sooner rather than later — a sentiment voters have consistently expressed since Trump launched the war at the end of February.
In an Economist/YouGov poll conducted September 18-21, 63 percent of Americans said the war should end as soon as possible, while only 15 percent disagreed. In a more recent poll from those organizations, published earlier this week, 63 percent of respondents said they disapprove of how Trump is handling the war, while only 31 percent said they approve.
A poll in mid-March found that 56 percent of respondents opposed the war, while only 36 percent approved — indicating that Americans’ support for the war has gone down, while their desire for an end to the conflict has increased.
Sixty-one percent of Americans wanted the war to end right then — around the time Trump said it would — while only 24 percent said it should keep going.
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