On Saturday, May 2, 2026, before boarding Air Force One in Palm Beach, Trump told reporters he would review Iran's new 14-point proposal to end the war. A reporter reminded him that the previous night he had said the U.S. might be better off not making a deal with Iran at all. Trump responded, according to CNN: “Well, I wouldn't have to. I didn't say that. I said that if we left right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild. But we're not leaving right now. We're gonna do it so nobody has to go back in two years or five years.”
CNN's Daniel Dale fact-checked the denial. Trump did say it, on camera, in a Friday, May 1 speech to the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches in South Florida: “Yesterday, somebody came up, said, 'Sir, the tournament is great.' I said, 'What tournament are you talking about? I'm so busy with the Iranians calling trying to make a good deal, and we're not gonna let that happen.' But … they've gotta make a bad deal. But — if they make a deal at all. Because frankly, maybe we're better off not making a deal at all, do you want to know the truth. Because we can't let this thing go on.” The New York Post and The National Desk reported the same remark the next day.
Trump did separately say in the same speech that “if we left right now, it would take them 20 years, 25 years, to rebuild the place.” As Dale noted, that does not negate the first remark. Both happened.
Dale described the denial as part of a pattern of Trump denying remarks the public saw him make. In December 2025, Trump told an ABC News reporter on camera that whatever video existed of a disputed follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat “we'd certainly release, no problem”; five days later he told another ABC reporter, “I didn't say that. That's — you said that, I didn't say that. This is ABC fake news.” During the 2024 campaign he denied saying “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton, though he had at multiple televised rallies. In an April 2025 Time interview he said he had been speaking “in jest” about immediately ending the Ukraine war, a promise he had made more than 50 times in an entirely serious manner, according to CNN.
Correction (October 2, 2026): The entry dated the denial to Saturday, May 3 and the speech to Friday, May 2; in 2026 that Saturday was May 2 and the speech was Friday, May 1. The entry's date has been corrected to May 2 and its time stamp removed. The entry also said the drug-boat video “had aired on national television” and attributed a motive (hoping the denial “sticks before the recording resurfaces”); neither is in the CNN fact check, and both have been removed.