Donald Trump talks about ISIS during his interview on Morning Joe on Friday. Trump pledges to hit Islamic State, not Assad

Donald Trump on Friday said that he would not pursue military action against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad but would go after the Islamic State in the region.

Calling in to MSNBC's "Morning Joe," the presumptive Republican nominee reiterated that he would not have put the United States in Iraq or in Libya. When asked if he would exercise his power to put the military in Syria, he said he would not.


"I would have stayed out of Syria and wouldn't have fought so much for Assad, against Assad because I thought that was a whole thing," Trump said. "You have Iran, which we made into a power. Iran now is a power. Because of us, because of some of the dumbest deals I have ever seen. So now you have Iran and you have Russia in favor of Assad. We're supposed to fight the two of them. At the same time, we're supposed to fight ISIS, who is fighting Assad."

Though Trump has insisted frequently that he has long opposed the U.S. military interventions in both Iraq and in Libya, his past comments tell a different story.

In September 2002, Trump told Howard Stern "Yeah, I guess so," when asked if he supported invading Iraq, according to audio unearthed by BuzzFeed in February. "I wish the first time it was done correctly," he said, in reference to the Gulf War more than a decade earlier that failed to topple Saddam Hussein.

And while Trump has said that removing Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi was a mistake, he made the case for U.S. intervention in the country back in 2011.“It’s horrible what’s going on; it has to be stopped. We should do on a humanitarian basis, immediately go into Libya, knock this guy out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively, and save the lives," Trump said, according to the video posted by BuzzFeed.

On Friday morning, co-host Joe Scarborough remarked, "So there are a lot of people who say you have inconsistent foreign policy, but it sounds consistent here as far as what you've said this morning. You wouldn't have gone into Libya. You wouldn't have gone into Iraq. You wouldn't go into Syria. You wouldn't have fought Assad."

"Right," Trump said. "But I'll go after ISIS big-league."

"So what you're saying is Assad can stay in power. That's not your interest," Scarborough said.

The U.S. has "bigger problems than Assad," Trump said, adding that he would tell the generals to "knock the hell out of ISIS, which we could have done originally."

"Knock the hell — look, we shouldn't have been in Iraq. Bad decision. Then the way Obama got us out was a horrible decision," Trump said. "The way we came out. And by the way, ISIS was created because of that, because they wouldn't take them in. Because we had the wrong leadership. We put the wrong leadership in Iraq."

As of Wednesday, the Pentagon said coalition forces have reclaimed 45 percent of territory formerly held by ISIL in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria. The U.S. has steadily increased the number of troops to the region in recent months, including an addition of up to 250 special forces personnel to Syria.

On North Korea, Trump clarified remarks he made to Reuters earlier this week in which he said he would consider speaking with the country's supreme leader, Kim Jong Un. “I wouldn’t go to North Korea. I wouldn’t go there. The last thing I would do is go,” Trump said, reiterating that he would speak with him but not visit his country. "I would never go to North Korea. I don’t know who would say I would go there."