Trump used the start of a speech about education at a charter school in Cleveland to push back at Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's statement that his position on Iraq is pretty much like her own: She voted for the 2003 war as a US senator from New York but has since disavowed the vote.
At an NBC forum on Wednesday night, Clinton pointed to a September 2002 interview Trump gave to radio host Howard Stern to say that Trump had supported the war. Trump had said "Yeah, I guess so," when asked about a potential conflict in Iraq.
Various fact-checkers have cited this interview to debunk Trump's statement that he was always against the war.
In Cleveland, Trump cited a Jan. 28, 2003, interview he did with Fox News' Neil Cavuto to say he was skeptical.
In that interview, Trump said: "I think the Iraqi situation is a problem. And I think the economy is a much bigger problem as far as the president is concerned."
He said in his Cleveland remarks that the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq had left a power void filled by Islamic State militants.
"But I was opposed to that war from the beginning, long before my interview with Howard Stern," Trump said.
"Just days after the war started, I was quoted as saying the war is a mess," Trump said, calling it "more evidence that I had opposed the war from the start."