It’s Donald Trump's latest reversal on a crucial element of the Obama foreign policy. | Getty Trump shifts position on Libya

Donald Trump reversed himself again on Libya on Sunday, saying in an interview that he would have authorized a “surgical” strike to take out Muammar Qadhafi, after months of telling voters the country would have been better off if the dictator were still alive.

“I didn't mind surgical. And I said surgical. You do a surgical shot and you take him out,” Trump said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”


It’s his latest reversal on a crucial element of the Obama foreign policy. Trump has spent most of the 2016 campaign contending that a bungled Obama intervention in Libya is proof that the United States should’ve stayed out altogether.

"I never discussed that subject. I was in favor of Libya?” Trump said at a Texas debate in February. “We would be so much better off if Qadhafi would be in charge right now."

That statement itself was a reversal from 2011, when Trump in a video blog argued that Qadhafi was slaughtering his citizens and that the United States should, “on a humanitarian basis, immediately go into Libya, knock this guy out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively, and save the lives." (NATO intervened on behalf of Qadhafi's foes, and anti-Qadhafi forces captured and killed him in October 2011.)

Pressed Sunday by John Dickerson about the shifts, Trump said, “I was for something, but I wasn't for what we have right now,” Trump said. He added, “I wasn't for what happened. Look at the way — I mean look at with Benghazi and all of the problems that we've had. It was handled horribly. … I was never for strong intervention. I could have seen surgical where you take out Qadhafi and his group.”