Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump responded Thursday, claiming he had seen a video of the $400 million payment being unloaded in Iran while speaking in Maine.
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The claim, however, was debunked Thursday morning by Trump’s own staff, who confirmed to the Washington Post what Trump actually saw: footage of Americans involved in the prisoner swap with Iran walking off a plane in Geneva, Switzerland.
Trump has been expressing outrage about a $400 million payment the US made to Iran this year.
The actual video shows footage from Geneva, Switzerland, on January 17, where American hostages flew after Iran allowed them to leave prison.
After Obama called Trump “unfit to serve as president”, the Republican fired back, saying Obama is the “worst president, maybe” in USA history.
On Thursday, Trump repeated that he saw such a video during a rally in Portland, Maine.
And then, Trump said, that Iran had released the tape “so that we will be embarrassed”. The footage he is referring to shows three shadowy figures disembarking from an aircraft, and was first shown on Fox News.
President Barack Obama denied any connection between the cash and the prisoner swap, saying: “We do not pay ransom for hostages”.
And at a rally in Virginia on Tuesday, he said: “I think these polls – I don’t know – there’s something about these polls, there’s something phony”.
A Trump spokeswoman told the Washington Post, the video Trump saw was grainy nighttime footage of people getting off a small plane, holding bags. “With the airplane coming in?”
Donald Trump’s recent sharp decline in national polls is also showing up in new surveys of competitive states, with a new poll of the biggest swing state, Florida, showing him trailing by six points. “I mean who would ever think that they would be taking all of this money off the plane and then providing us with a tape?”
“I saw $400m – different currencies, they probably don’t want our currency – being flown to Iran”, Trump said in a videotaped speech to a crowd of almost 2,000 in Portland, Maine, Thursday (4 August).
Trump said, ‘It was a ideal angle, nice and steady, nobody getting nervous because they’re gonna be shot’. “Nice plane. And the airplane coming and the money coming off, I guess”. She said it was the footage used in every broadcast on American media, including Fox News, where Trump watched it. After all, the campaign has said he has yet to receive daily classified briefings afforded to presidential candidates. ABEDINI: I just remember the night that we’ve been in an airport – you know – just take hours and hours there. Right? $400 million in cash. The footage is labelled “January 17”, the day of the release of the US citizens and of the announcement of the $400 million payment.
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Asked about Trump’s row with the parents of Captain Humayun Khan, Pierson told CNN: ‘It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagement that probably cost his life’. Moreover, The Wall Street Journal, which this week reported previously unknown details of the payment, said the cash was flown to Tehran.
