Trump says a former president had an Iran confession. Aides to his predecessors deny recent contact
WASHINGTON (AP) — Twice Monday, President Donald Trump He said he had made a sort of confession from his Oval Office predecessors, who he said had expressed regret in a private meeting. Attacking Iran like Trump did for more than two weeks.
But there’s one small catch: Representatives for the four living former presidents — three Democrats and one Republican — said none of them had contacted Trump recently.
When reporters asked who he was, Trump refused to name the former president, saying he didn’t want to “embarrass him.”
The Republican president first told this story in the opening remarks of a speech during lengthy remarks about the Iran war. Kennedy Center board of trustees meeting. 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, no president in 47 years has been willing to do what I did, and they should have done it a long time ago,” he said. “It would be so much easier. There’s no president who wants to do that.
“And yet every president knew. I actually talked to a president that I like, a former president, a former president. He said, ‘I wish I did, I wish I did,’ but they didn’t. I do,” Trump continued.
When asked which former president he had met with, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that. I don’t want to embarrass him. That would be very bad for his career, even if it wasn’t his career.”
Representatives for former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden said they had not met with Trump recently. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the former presidents’ private conversations.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment after learning that neither former president said he had spoken to Trump recently.
The last time Trump and all four past presidents were together in the same field was at the inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, long before the war.
He was highly critical of Biden and Obama; He frequently says Biden is “the worst president in the history of our country” and accuses Obama of negotiating a “terrible deal” with Iran over its nuclear weapons. When Trump became president for the first time, he withdrew the USA from this agreement.
But the Republican recently made sympathetic comments about Clinton, saying it “disturbed” him that the former president was called on to make a statement. Testifying to Congress about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I loved Bill Clinton. I still love Bill Clinton,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News on February 4. “I liked the way he treated me. I thought he understood me, understood me.”
Trump repeated his story about meeting with a former president about Iran in the Oval Office later Monday, where he announced that Vice President J.D. Vance would lead a task force created to eliminate fraud in federal aid 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 it. I don’t want to say it.”
