President Trump told Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" in an exclusive interview Friday that he believes Iraq should pay back the United States for its investments in the country over the past several years or the American military will "stay there." "I said, 'If we leave, you got to pay us,'" Trump told host Laura Ingraham. "'If we leave ... you have to pay us for the money we put in.'" When Ingraham asked how Trump planned to collect money from Iraq, the president said: "Well, we have a lot of their money right now. We have a lot of their money. We have $35 billion of their money right now sitting in an account. And I think they'll agree to pay. I think they'll agree to pay. Earlier this week, Iraq's outgoing prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, called for American troops to leave the country to avoid further tensions with Iran. Mahdi's comments came the day after Iranian Quds Force Gen. Qassem Soleimani was killed in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad's airport. A senior Iraqi commander of an Iran-backed militia was also killed. Trump had tweeted last week: "The United States has paid Iraq Billions of Dollars a year, for many years.