Obama and Trump aren’t friends. Things are heating up.
Now Trump called out Barack Obama for making a massive mistake.
He Said What He Came To Say. Then He Was Done.
Donald Trump sat down with NBC’s Kristen Welker in Wisconsin on Sunday for what turned into one of the more memorable presidential media encounters of his current term — featuring a sharp defense of the Iran war, a direct assault on the Obama legacy, and ultimately Trump telling Welker she works for a “one-sided crooked network” before ending the interview.
The central exchange came when Welker challenged Trump on Iran’s nuclear trajectory, arguing that Tehran had “escalated their development” after Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement in 2018. Trump didn’t accept the premise.
“Obama signed that stupid deal where he paid them billions and billions of dollars, he thought he could bribe them,” Trump said. “They were developing it during the nuclear deal. You don’t know that?”
He went further, attributing Iran’s nuclear progress specifically to the Obama-era policy and the resources it freed up for Tehran. “They got all of this uranium during Obama, you know that, don’t you? That’s how they got there… They got there. They developed it during the Obama, Barack Hussein Obama…”
He also made his most direct claim yet about the stakes of the military campaign. “If I didn’t go in there with the B-2 bombers, they would right now have a nuclear weapon, and it could be that half of the world would be eradicated.”
On The “No New Wars” Promise — And How Trump Answers It
Welker pressed Trump on what has become one of the most persistent lines of attack against his Iran policy: that he campaigned explicitly against endless wars, and has now started one. Trump’s answer was multifaceted — and more coherent than his critics have been willing to acknowledge.
“First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war,” Trump said. “Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?”
He then drew the distinction that underlies his entire strategic rationale: the Iran conflict is not an endless war in the tradition of Afghanistan or Iraq, because it has a finite objective. “This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months. Much of it has been under the form a pretty good form of ceasefire.”
He articulated the mission with characteristic directness: preventing a nuclear-armed Iran. “I had to stop a country — very powerful, very dangerous country — from having a nuclear weapon because they’d use it. They’d blow up the world, they’d blow up the Middle East, they’d blow up Israel, they’d come here, they’d blow up Europe.”
He also addressed the endgame, making explicit that even a post-conflict Iran cannot be allowed to rebuild its nuclear program. “If we left tomorrow, if we just said, ‘All right, let’s get out,’ it’ll take them 15 or 20 years to rebuild back, but I’m not going to give them even that chance… They cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
The Exit — And What It Means For The Record
The interview ended when Welker tried to move to questions about California elections and Trump’s claims about the anti-weaponization fund. Trump declined to continue. “You’re a one-sided crooked network,” he told Welker. “Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”
Trump had previously accused NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN of being “crooked” during earlier exchanges in the same conversation. The walkout has generated considerable media coverage — far more, predictably, than the specific substance of what Trump said about the JCPOA.
That substance deserves to outlast the theater. Obama’s Iran deal provided Tehran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief, including the return of frozen assets. It imposed limits on enrichment that were temporary — governed by sunset clauses — rather than permanent. Iran subsequently breached the deal’s terms before Trump even withdrew. The agreement that Obama celebrated as a generational foreign policy achievement left Iran in a better economic position than before while providing only a temporary pause on the nuclear program that Trump is now, through military force, trying to eliminate permanently.
“Stupid” may be imprecise as a historical assessment. But “insufficient” is not.
