From the August 12 edition of CNN's New Day:
As Trump Surrogate Tries To Spin, CNN Plays Tape Exposing Trump's Iraq Hypocrisy
2007 CNN Video Of Trump: We Should “Declare Victory” In Iraq “And Leave”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
CHRIS CUOMO (CO-HOST): So your boss, Donald Trump, tweets this morning, says, “I'm watching the show and you guys are missing my sarcasm. That when I say founder of ISIS, President Obama, I'm being sarcastic.” But he has spent the last couple of days insisting that he is not being sarcastic. Bill O'Reilly, Hugh Hewitt, giving him opportunities to say exactly that. What you mean is that Obama is responsible for their growth. He goes, “No, no, no, they're the founder.” So what are we supposed to believe when he says something --
MICHAEL COHEN: I think the best thing is if Mr. Trump called in, had the conversation with you himself.
CUOMO: Anytime, anytime, the offer is open.
COHEN: I mean there's nobody better to answer Mr. Trump than Mr. Trump. But Mr. Trump has --
CUOMO: The question is, should people have doubts about whether or not you can take him at his word?
COHEN: Well I think you do take him at his word for everything.
CUOMO: But that's how we got into this situation. “No, I mean founder, I said founder. I mean founder.”
COHEN: Again, but what you're doing -- I watched your show yesterday with [former New York City] Mayor [Rudy] Giuliani. What he was talking about is how the mainstream media wants to pick on every single word. Again, I think Mr. Trump will answer this question better than anybody else. And I think it should be left for him to answer.
CUOMO: We'll talk. I know you want to talk about the Clinton emails. But just to make a point --
COHEN: I'll tell you what I would really like to talk about is her economic, well I should say her failing economic conversation yesterday.
CUOMO: We'll talk about that as well, but when she says short-circuited, we're all over it for days. When she calls something a mistake instead of apologizing, we're all over it for days. So parsing words is part of the business.
COHEN: But we're talking about when someone says that they short circuited, that's about themself, right? Mr. Trump was claiming that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are the founders of ISIS. What he's referring to, and he's talked about it so many times, is of course the fact that ISIS grew and grew out of --
CUMOMO: Sure.
COHEN: -- control and is now a threat to our national security, to our families.
CUOMO: But he muddied it by insisting -- and he muddied it before that, to be honest with you. At the town hall, he blamed [George W.] Bush for ISIS. In 2007, he said to Wolf [Blitzer], “We should get out of Iraq right now,” which is now a strategy that he's criticizing in President Obama. So he's been all over the place on this.
COHEN: Well I'm not so sure. I think he's been very very consistent.
[CROSSTALK]
CUOMO: You want to see it? 2007 with Wolf, here it is.
[BEGIN VIDEO]
DONALD TRUMP: How do they get out? You know how they get out? They get out. That's how they get out. Declare victory and leave. Because I'll tell you, this country is just going to get further bogged down. They're in a civil war over there, Wolf. There's nothing that we're going to be able to do with a civil war. They are in a major civil war.
[END VIDEO]
CUOMO: “Get out,” that's what he's criticizing about Obama now.
[CROSSTALK]
COHEN: But I don't think you saw the beginning. What he was talking about is economically it is a disaster to the United States, spending trillions of dollars that we do not have. And instead of spending the --
CUOMO: Fine. That's a rationale for getting out. But he's now saying getting out was a huge mistake. That's what I'm pointing out.
COHEN: But the clip is not in its entirety and it's a little bit unfair because, yes, maybe three or four seconds of that clip proves the point, but it doesn't prove what you're saying.
CUOMO: Getting out was either right or wrong. He says it was wrong. There he said it was right.
COHEN: The question I believe was about the fact that economically it was destroying this country. And what Mr. Trump has always said is make America great again and putting America first. We can't afford to be the protectors of the world. They should pay us back, which is what he was always talking about. Take the oil. He was talking about, yes, get out because we were losing soldiers. Our American children, our soldiers, our money is all being depleted, right, and wasted on protecting a country that probably really didn't even want us there.
Previously:
What To Do When The Trump Campaign Is Gaslighting Your Network
CNN's Cuomo Grills Trump Surrogate On “Hypocrisy” Behind Trump's Attacks On Clintons