Trump’s Dangerous Lie About Seeing a ‘Top Secret’ Government Film Showing Cash for US Hostages

Serial Liar Donald Trump Told a Huge and Dangerous Lie That Puts the Lives of All Americans Overseas at Risk

The American government does not pay ransom money for hostages. That’s an important stance designed to protect all Americans abroad, so foreign governments and others hostile to the United States know that they can’t make money randomly kidnapping U.S. citizens. 

But on Wednesday Donald Trump told an audience of supporters a dangerous lie that put the lives of every American citizen abroad, now and in the future, in danger. Trump claimed he saw a “top secret” video filmed by “government cameras” in Iran showing $400 million in cash being given to the Iranian government in exchange for the U.S. soldiers they detained back in January for illegally entering Iranian waters.

“It looks like we paid $400 million for the hostages,” Trump falsely claimed, as ABC News reported. 

“When they took our sailors, they forced them to their knees and the only reason we got them back is that we hadn’t paid the money yet,” Trump said, which is untrue. “And that’s the only reason we got ’em back. Otherwise, they would’ve had to wait until I became president.”

“I’ll never forget the scene this morning,” Trump on Wednesday told supporters at a rally in Daytona Beach, Florida. “Iran — I don’t think you’ve heard this anywhere but here — Iran provided all of that footage, the tape, of taking that money off that airplane. Right?”

“Now, here’s the amazing thing: Over there, where that plane landed, top secret, you don’t have a lot of paparazzi. You know, the paparazzi doesn’t do so well over there, right?”

“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.”

Watch:

He didn’t see any such video, and his campaign spokesperson later confirmed that.

New York Magazine also expertly detailed the story, rebutting a Huffington Post claim that Trump may have leaked classified national security intelligence from the briefings he’s now able to receive.

ABC News Wednesday evening published a very detailed explanation of why the U.S. government delivered $400 million to Iran, and it goes back to the 1979 sale of weapons that was never completed.

“In the late 1970s the Iranian government, under the U.S.-backed shah, paid the United States $400 million for military equipment. The equipment was never delivered because in 1979, his government was overthrown, revolutionaries took American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran were severed,” ABC News reports. “Litigation over these claims has continued intermittently for 35 years.”

The Washington Post also dug into the story.

“The Washington Post asked Trump’s staff to explain what Trump was talking about and emailed a link to a Fox News clip that showed the January footage from Geneva, asking if that was the video the nominee saw.”

“Yes,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the Post via email. “Merely the b-roll footage included in every broadcast.”

So Trump lied.

And his lies put American lives in danger, because now terrorists think America will pay cash for hostages.