Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

For months, Donald Trump has claimed that he opposed the Iraq War before the invasion began — as an example of his great judgment on foreign policy issues. But in a 2002 interview with Howard Stern, Donald Trump said he supported an Iraq invasion. In the interview, which took place on Sept. 11, 2002, Stern asked Trump directly if he was for invading Iraq. "Yeah, I guess so," Trump responded. "I wish the first time it was done correctly." Trump has repeatedly claimed that he was against the Iraq War before it began, despite no evidence of him publicly stating this position. On Meet the Press, Trump said there weren't many articles about his opposition because he wasn't a politician at the time. "Well, I did it in 2003, I said it before that," Trump said of his opposition to invading Iraq. "Don't forget, I wasn't a politician. So people didn't write everything I said. I was a businessperson. I was, as they say, a world-class businessperson. I built a great company, I employed thousands of people. So I'm not a politician. But if you look at 2003, there are articles. If you look in 2004, there are articles." Trump's comments on Stern are more in line with what he wrote in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, where he advocated for a "principled and tough" policy toward "outlaw" states like Iraq. "We still don't know what Iraq is up to or whether it has the material to build nuclear weapons. I'm no warmonger," Trump wrote. "But the fact is, if we decide a strike against Iraq is necessary, it is madness not to carry the mission to its conclusion. When we don't, we have the worst of all worlds: Iraq remains a threat, and now has more incentive than ever to attack us."

Trump, asked by CNN's Anderson Cooper at a town hall on Thursday about the Stern interview, said, "I could have said that." buzzfeed-video1.s3.amazonaws.com

"I could have said that," Trump said. "Nobody asked me that. I wasn't a politician. It was probably the first time anyone has asked me that question." Trump added, "When you're in the private sector, you get asked things, and you're not a politician, and probably the first time I was asked. By the time the war started, I was against it, and shortly thereafter, I was really against."

Here is what Trump has said in the past about his opposition to the Iraq invasion: At the Feb. 6 debate in New Hampshire, Trump said, "I'm the only one up here, when the war of Iraq -- in Iraq, I was the one that said, 'Don't go, don't do it, you're going to destabilize the Middle East.'" At a Republican debate in September of last year, Trump said he could provide 25 stories showing his early opposition to the Iraq War. "You can check it out, check out — I'll give you 25 different stories," Trump said.