Fact check: Trump told NBC that he never promised not to start a new war. He did, repeatedly

Daniel Dale, CNN | 6/8/2026, 10:51 a.m.
An examination of campaign speeches and public statements argues that President Donald Trump repeatedly promised Americans there would be no …
Donald Trump

President Donald Trump told a bunch of lies before he abruptly walked out of an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” One of them was about what he had promised Americans about war.


While discussing the Iran war Trump started this year, NBC anchor Kristen Welker pressed him on what had changed from the campaign promise she described as “no new wars.” The president responded to this line of questioning in several ways – you can read the full transcript here – but one of his claims was this: “First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war.” Later, he said, “So when you say I promised – I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war.”


In fact, Trump repeatedly promised in 2024 that the US would not have any wars during his second presidency. Though it’s true that he often deployed some nuance on the subject – for example, vowing to end “endless” wars or prevent “World War III” – he unequivocally pledged on other occasions that the US wouldn’t get involved in wars, period.


Here are some examples.


In a June 2024 social media post, Trump described the election as “a choice between STRENGTH or WEAKNESS, COMPETENCE or INCOMPETENCE, peace and prosperity or war and no war.” Then, in one of the highest-profile speeches of the campaign, his July 2024 address to the Republican National Convention, he said, “With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness, and chaos will be over. I don’t have wars.”


He made the promise even more directly during an August 2024 rally speech in the swing state of Pennsylvania, saying: “Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all.”


Trump reprised the pledge in an August 2024 interview with Adin Ross, an online personality popular with young men. After saying there were no wars during his first administration, he promised, “And we won’t have wars again.” (Expressing concern about the final months of the Biden administration, he added, “But we could have a war before we even get there. That’s the problem.”)


At a rally that month in another hotly contested state, North Carolina, Trump approvingly cited Viktor Orbán, then the prime minister of Hungary, as supposedly having said, “Make sure that Trump gets re-elected president and you’re not going to have any more wars.” The audience applauded; Trump himself reiterated moments later, “No more wars. No more disruptions. We will have prosperity and we will have peace.”


Trump told versions of the Orbán story at numerous other events. For example, in the swing state of Wisconsin in October 2024, he said, “Viktor Orbán said, ‘If Trump comes back, you won’t have any wars. You won’t have any wars.’ And he’s about as tough as they get, and he said it loud and clear and he said why. But you won’t have any wars.”


Trump made a clear promise that he would not start a war even in his victory address in November 2024, when he no longer had to persuade voters to elect him. He said in that high-profile speech: “Four years, we had no wars, except we defeated ISIS. … They said, ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”


Other Trump comments were less clear


It is true that Trump’s 2024 campaign rhetoric about war was often at least slightly more nuanced – or, less generously, slightly more muddled.


At one prominent event, an October 2024 rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, he confusingly bounced back and forth between promising there would be no new US wars if he became president again and saying that war could happen.


“We sort of need (domestically manufactured) steel in this country. Like, we’re not going to go to war with me as your president. But if we – on the long shot that we do, we don’t want to say, ‘We need steel. Can we get it from China? Or can we get it from someplace else?’ You know, it’s always a possibility. But I will tell you, you’re not going to have a war with me, and you’re not going to have a third World War with me,” he said. “That I can tell you.”


In June 2024 remarks to young supporters in the swing state of Arizona, he said, “So we are going to make sure there’s no wars.” But then he arguably backtracked a little, saying, “We don’t want to have wars. I call them endless wars. I call them wars where people don’t even want us involved.”


At various other moments during the campaign, Trump pledged to end “endless” wars or prevent “World War III”; that’s not quite the same as saying he would avoid all wars. He also made a variety of comments that sounded broadly anti-war but didn’t include overt assurances not to involve the US in any future wars. For example, he said the country doesn’t“need” wars, denounced “warmongers,” pledged to be a “peacemaker,” and frequently boasted that he had no wars in his first term (sometimes citing the inherited fight against ISIS as the one exception).


People can have a reasonable debate about whether these kinds of comments were likely to be interpreted by some voters as a promise not to get the country involved in wars in a second term. For the purpose of debunking Trump’s “I didn’t promise anything” claim to NBC, though, the debate is irrelevant – because, again, the record shows that Trump explicitly made a no-future-wars promise multiple times.