Trump Asked What He Meant by ‘We’ve Already Won in Many Ways’ But ‘Haven’t Won Enough’

President Donald Trump was asked to explain his remark that the U.S. has “already won in many ways” in Iran, but “hasn’t won enough.”

During a speech to the Republican Issues Conference on Monday, Trump said, “We’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough. We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all.”

The president gave a press conference from his Doral resort on Monday night, during which the Iran war was a frequent topic. One reporter asked Trump to explain what he meant when he said the U.S. had “already won” but not enough:

REPORTER: You said earlier that we’ve already won in many ways, but we haven’t won enough. What do you consider enough? What’s your baseline?

THE PRESIDENT: Where they’re not going to be starting the following day to develop a nuclear weapon. Where they’ll look at that man and some other people from the administration and say, “All right, we’re not going to do it.” They were not willing to say that. And when Steve called up and he said that to me, I said, “Well, here we go. Let’s do it the hard way.”

The hard way, I think, is probably the easy way, when basically I can see that they will no longer have any capacity whatsoever for a very long period of time of developing weaponry that could be used against the United States, Israel, or any of our allies. We have great allies in the Middle East, great countries that are allies. And they were staying out of it until they got hit.

Someday they’ll have to do a story. Why did he do that? Why did they do that? But they were going to hit them. If I didn’t hit them first, they were going to hit our allies first. I believe, upon information and belief, but I believe that they were going to take over the Middle East. They were looking to take over the Middle East.

Now, had Operation Midnight Hammer not taken place? That was definite, because they would have had a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks. But that took place. That was a setback. But look at the number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months. And those missiles were aimed at various countries.

And when you look at a thousand — over a thousand missiles shot at, like, UAE — they were looking to take over the Middle East. We got there first. We’re lucky. I’ll tell you what, the Middle East and those countries, very rich countries, are very lucky that I was President instead of somebody else.

Watch above via White House press pool.

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