Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld forcefully pushed back against claims that President Trump’s stance on Iran is driven by Israel, arguing that the record shows decades of consistent rhetoric from Trump himself. Reacting on “The Five,” Gutfeld insisted critics are ignoring a long history of statements in which Trump outlined a hardline approach to Iran dating back to the 1980s.
Fox News’ Dana Perino noted, “One of the big things that’s been emerging is this criticism that started early on in the war, which is that ‘Israel made Trump do it.’ The president’s rejected that, Karoline Leavitt, they’ve all rejected that, except for that there is a strain that wants that to be the issue.”
People from the horseshoe Right, such as Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, to hard-Left figures such as Ilhan Omar, among others, have bandied about the scurrilous claim that President Trump is doing Israel’s bidding in attacking Iran.
“But that has been disproven by history!” Gutfeld exclaimed. “You have 40 years of Trump talking about Iran. He said what he was going to do to Iran in the 1980s! He actually telegraphed what he was gonna do to the island of Kharg.”
🚨 Greg Gutfeld SHREDS the claim that Israel ‘made’ Trump attack Iran: “That has been disproven by history!”
“You have 40 years of Trump talking about Iran. He said what he was going to do to Iran in the 1980s!”
“He telegraphed what he was going to do to the island of Kharg,”… pic.twitter.com/OU6IOf6Z11
— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) March 18, 2026
In 1980, 46 years ago, Donald Trump told interviewer Rona Barrett this after Iran seized and held American hostages: “When you get the respect of the other countries, then the other countries tend to do a little bit as you do, and you can create the right attitudes. The Iranian situation is a case in point. That they hold our hostages is just absolutely and totally ridiculous. That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror. And I don’t think they’d do it with other countries. I honestly don’t think they’d do it with other countries.”
“Obviously, you’re advocating that we should have gone in there with troops, etc., and brought our boys out,” Barrett pressed.
“I absolutely feel that, yes. I don’t think there’s any question, and there’s no question in my mind,” Trump replied.
In 1987, Trump told The Guardian, “I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools. One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it. Iran can’t even beat Iraq, yet they push the United States around. It’d be good for the world to take them on.”
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