In the latest in absurd Donald Trump news, the presidential nominee keeps on insisting that he saw a video of the money transfer the United States sent to Iran in exchange for three prisoners. He spoke about it at a Florida rally on Wednesday, and then at a rally in Portland, Maine on Thursday. The only thing is that the footage he’s talking about actually refers to something else, which a media chyron hilariously called him out on during the Maine event.
According to the Washington Post, Trump brought up a video that supposedly shows this money transfer. The footage he is referring to shows three shadowy figures disembarking from an aircraft, and was first shown on Fox News.
Trump described this tape at the Florida rally as a means for Iran to embarrass the United States:
“And they have a perfect tape, done by obviously a government camera, and the tape is of the people taking the money off the plane. Right? That means that in order to embarrass us further, Iran sent us the tapes. Right? It’s a military tape; it’s a tape that was a perfect angle, nice and steady, nobody getting nervous because they’re gonna be shot because they’re shooting a picture of money pouring off a plane.”
The only thing is that the video actually shows the three American prisoners landing in Geneva after the transfer. That’s how Fox News labeled the footage, in fact. Trump’s spokeswoman confirmed that he was referring to this “b-roll footage included in every broadcast.” She however did not answer questions about why Trump thinks the video shows the money transfer.
Even if we give Trump the benefit of the doubt, officials involved in this negotiation with Iran were not aware of any video footage, and any classified security briefing that Trump could’ve learned this from as a presidential nominee has not yet begun. It therefore looks like Trump is labeling this footage in order to push the narrative that Iran is constantly taking advantage of America, and that as president he would put a stop to that. This is probably why during Thursday’s Maine rally, as Mediate reports, MSNBC called Trump out using a blunt chyron:
I LOVE it when they fact check Trump in the chyron#shade pic.twitter.com/df98HtL5Pb
— Zerlina Maxwell (@ZerlinaMaxwell) August 4, 2016
https://twitter.com/pamela_vogel/status/761283041285185536
Mediaite also reported that MSNBC’s foreign correspondent discussed not being able to find such a video, after a lot of digging. So here’s another instance of Donald Trump bending the truth. It’s a good thing that the media is directly challenging him on it.
(Via Washington Post/Mediaite)