Donald Trump wasn't always against cutting the defense budget — in fact he called for it not long ago.
During a 2013 interview on Fox News, Trump applauded a $31 billion cut from the Pentagon's budget under sequestration, and said it didn't go far enough
"It's a very small percentage of the cuts that should be made, and I think, really, it's being over exaggerated," Trump said in February 2013. "I think you're going to have to do a lot more cutting. If you're going to balance budgets, you're going to be doing a lot more cutting — and there's no question about it."
And yet this week, Trump said, "it's true, it's true," to a supporter at a rally in northern Virginia who cried, "sequestration's killing us, too," Politico reports. The region has strong economic ties to the defense industry and hosts a large U.S. military presence.
"I'm going to make our military so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody — absolutely nobody — is going to mess with us," Trump says in a video on his website.
Trump apparently hopes to get allied countries like Japan, Germany and South Korea to pay more for American military support, according to Kiplinger.com, a personal finance website.
"I'm gonna build a military that's gonna be much stronger than it is right now. It's gonna be so strong, nobody's gonna mess with us. But you know what? We can do it for a lot less," Trump said on "Meet the Press" last October, citing savings from eliminating waste and fraud.
"I think we can make our defense much stronger, (and) spend somewhat less money."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.