“And you know, it was interesting, because a tape was made, right, you saw that with the airplane coming in? They said they are waiting for another plane and so if that plane doesn’t come, we never let you go”, he said. “The president can say that that wasn’t a ransom payment, but the whole world knows that it was”, Pence said, and continued to slam the Iran nuclear deal, which he said Clinton initiated with the Iranian mullahs. “They want to embarrass our country”.
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Trump doubled down on his false claim about the “top secret” footage, even after his own spokeswoman admitted it was just b-roll footage widely circulated across the media.
Although concerns persist that the money was a reward for the release of Americans, those concerns relate to four private US citizens who were held in Iranian prison – not the 10 USA sailors who went too close to an Iranian military installation and were briefly held by Iranian forces and reprimanded by their own superiors for the navigation mistake.
But critics have called it ransom, and Trump told crowds Wednesday and Thursday there was video of the money being handed over – and that the tapes were handed over by Iran to embarrass the U.S.
Now, here’s the incredible thing.
“Now, here’s the wonderful thing: Over there, where that plane landed, top secret, you don’t have a lot of paparazzi. Right? You saw that?”
It was a rare reversal for Trump, who has stood by inaccurate or unproven claims previously – insisting he’d seen videos of Muslim-Americans in New Jersey cheering the September 11, 2001 attacks.
There was no such tape.
Meanwhile, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said in an interview on Fox News on Wednesday that Trump’s national security briefings had not yet begun.
The video Trump refers to was reportedly recorded January 17 in Geneva when three Americans were released from prison in Tehran, Iran. There was nothing “top secret” about it.
Why did the United States government authorise the transfer of $400m (£305m) in cash to Iran at the same moment that four American captives were released by the Iranian government?
Kaine, who was a co-chairman of President Obama’s White House bid in 2008, said that Clinton would be able to fight the gridlock in Congress because she has better relationships with Congressional members than President Obama did when he entered the White House.
The move comes after Trump gave his blessing to his running mate Mike Pence to get behind Ryan.
Trump nonetheless ran with the fiction in Portland on Thursday.
It was the latest in a long line of differences between Trump and Pence. Trump said without offering evidence that it was the Iranian government.
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Trump apparently could only think of his daughter, telling a local station, “Well there are so many different ones to choose, I can tell you everybody would say – ‘put Ivanka in! He’s the greatest human being”.
