WASHINGTON (AP) — Twice on Monday, President Donald Trump said he’d wrangled a confession of sorts from an Oval Office predecessor who he said had expressed regret in a private conversation about not attacking Iran the way Trump has been doing for more than two weeks.
But there’s just a little problem: Representatives for the four living former presidents — three Democrats and one Republican — said none have been in touch with Trump recently.
Trump declined to name the former president when reporters asked who it was, saying he didn’t want to “embarrass him.”
The Republican president first told the story during extended remarks about the Iran war as he opened a meeting of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center. Trump is chairman of the board and held the meeting at the White House.
He repeated that Iran had been a threat to the United States for decades but said he is the only president who had the courage to do something about it.
“Look, for 47 years, no president was willing to do what I’m doing, and they should have done it a long time ago,” he said. “It would have been a lot easier. There’s no president that wanted to do it.
“And yet every president knew. I’ve spoken to a certain president, who I like, actually, a past president, a former president. He said, ‘I wish I did it, I wish I did,’ but they didn’t do it. I’m doing it,” Trump continued.
Asked which former president he’d spoken to, Trump said: “I can’t tell you that. I don’t want to embarrass him. It would be very bad for his career, even though he’s got no career.”
Representatives for each of former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden said they had not spoken with Trump recently. The individuals spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the former presidents’ private conversations.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment after being informed that none of the former presidents said he had spoken with Trump recently.
Trump and all four past presidents were last together in the same space for his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025 — well before the war.
He has been extremely critical of Biden and Obama, often saying Biden is the “worst president in the history of our country” and accusing Obama of negotiating a “horrible deal” with Iran over its nuclear weapons. Trump withdrew the U.S. from that agreement the first time he was president.
But the Republican recently offered sympathetic comments about Clinton, saying it “bothers” him that the former president had been called to give a deposition to Congress about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I liked Bill Clinton. I still like Bill Clinton,” Trump said in a Feb. 4 interview with NBC News. “I liked his behavior toward me. I thought he got me, he understood me.”
Trump repeated his story about discussing Iran with a former president later Monday in the Oval Office, where he announced that Vice President JD Vance will lead a task force that was created to eliminate fraud in federal benefit programs.
“Was it George W. Bush?” a reporter asked.
“No,” Trump said.
“Was it Bill Clinton?” the reporter asked.
Trump said: “I don’t want to say. I don’t want to say,” then added that “it’s somebody that happens to like me. And I like that person, who’s a smart person. But that person said, ‘I wish I did it,’ OK, but I don’t want to get into who, OK. I don’t want to get them into trouble.”
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