President Donald Trump used a question about surging oil prices at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday to deliver an expansive defense of his own judgment — asserting that he has been correct about everything throughout his political career and that his record of accuracy is precisely what has made him president on three separate occasions, including, he claimed, an election he says was stolen from him.
The moment came when a reporter from CNBC noted that oil markets were up roughly 7 percent for both WTI and Brent crude and asked whether the world was now on the cusp of a full return to conflict with Iran. Trump responded with his characteristic dismissal of the market concerns — but then pivoted into a broader statement about his own track record of predictions.
“I’ve predicted everything. I’ve been right about everything and I have been for a long time,” Trump said. “It’s how I got to be president three times. It’s how I won three elections.”
The claim that Trump has won the presidency three times — referring to his 2016 win, his controversial 2020 defeat, and his 2024 landslide victory — is one he has repeated with growing frequency in public appearances. Trump has long maintained that the 2020 election was fraudulent, a claim rejected by federal courts, election officials of both parties, and the Justice Department under his own first administration.
On Wednesday, he reiterated that position while speaking to assembled NATO press. “I did very well in the second one,” he said of 2020. “It was a rigged election, but I’ve been right.”
The claim mirrors statements Trump has made consistently in other forums. As recently as June 2026, during a taped interview with NBC, Trump said: “The election was rigged, it was a dirty election.” When pressed for evidence, Trump argued that “all I have to do is look and I listen to people.”
The broader context for Trump’s self-assessment at the NATO summit was his prediction that oil prices, despite the current spike, would come back down. He pointed to what he described as an oil glut in the Strait of Hormuz, and insisted the market would correct itself. The assertion of infallibility was offered as supporting evidence — if he has been right about everything before, the argument went, he is right about this too.
Trump’s claim of three presidential victories has become a recurring element of his public speaking. He made similar statements during speeches at Mount Rushmore earlier this month, during White House briefings, and in social media posts across Truth Social and TikTok. The framing always links his predictive accuracy to his electoral record, presenting the two as inseparable proof of his singular political instinct.
Notably, Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged resurfaced at a NATO summit — one of the most prominent stages of international diplomacy — before the leaders of 32 allied nations and a global press corps. The comment was offered not as a digression but as a direct piece of evidence for why his assessment of the Iranian oil market should be trusted.
The 2024 election, which Trump did win in a decisive electoral college and popular vote victory over Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, marked his official return to the White House in January 2025. He has since claimed that the 2024 result validated everything he said about the 2020 contest, using each new policy success as retroactive proof that his version of events was always correct.
On the substance of his Iran predictions specifically, Trump pointed to the military degradation of Iranian forces, the denuclearization of underground nuclear sites, and what he characterized as a collapse of Iran’s economic and military standing as evidence that his approach has worked exactly as he said it would.
Trump’s comments did not generate visible pushback from the assembled NATO leadership, who largely remained focused on the military dimensions of the Iran situation rather than the domestic political claims embedded in the president’s remarks. The comment passed quickly, as the press conference moved on to the next reporter’s question — but the claim of three presidential victories, voiced on a world stage, is unlikely to go unnoticed.