Former US president Bill Clinton has condemned Donald Trump’s presidency and criticised the Iran war, arguing that the conflict had contributed directly to higher petrol prices.
Speaking in Mississippi at a campaign event for Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom, Mr Clinton said the attack on Iran had been “not very well thought out”.
“I think about the high gas prices that are the direct result of a not very well thought out attack on Iran,” he said.
Mr Clinton, 80, said he wanted Iran never to become a nuclear power and hoped it would eventually develop into a “genuine democracy”. But he argued that military action carried consequences that needed to be considered in advance.
“You don’t start killing people unless you know how you’re gonna stop,” he said.
He added that, while he had supported efforts to disrupt Iran’s nuclear ambitions during his presidency, he had never believed the US should go to war without intending to occupy the country.
Mr Clinton also attacked what he described as “the corruption, the ego projects” of the Trump administration. He referred to the president’s reported desire to build an arch named after himself and repeated a joke that Mr Trump had made the Oval Office look “like the entrance to Liberace’s bedroom”.
The former president said he and Mr Trump had once enjoyed a friendly relationship and had played golf together 24 years ago. He recalled Mr Trump’s longstanding enthusiasm for tariffs, quoting him as saying: “We’re the biggest, strongest country in the world, why don’t we just put a bunch of tariffs on these countries and stop paying taxes altogether?”
Mr Clinton said he had explained that foreign countries did not simply absorb the cost of tariffs, but passed it on to consumers through higher prices.
“He just, like now, he didn’t hear what he didn’t want to hear. You’ve got these higher gas prices, that’s the Iran War,” he said.
The speech was delivered in support of Mr Colom, a prosecutor seeking to replace Trump-endorsed Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Mr Clinton urged voters to back the Democrat, saying Mississippi would help test whether former president George Bush’s description of democracy as “self-correcting” was true.
He acknowledged his age during the appearance, joking that whenever he walked into a room he was “the oldest person”. He also said that one blessing of being older was that “you can say whatever you want”, adding: “Of course, many people don’t care anymore.”
Mr Clinton’s criticism came despite his own administration having launched bombing campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan, including strikes in 1993, 1996 and 1998.
Polymarket, a prediction market cited in the campaign material, gave Ms Hyde-Smith an 88 per cent chance of winning in Mississippi.
