The Associated Press is no different in its outsized, overtly negative coverage of President Donald Trump than any other ‘mainstream’ media outlet, as it proved once again when they decided to “fact check” the president’s claim that his predecessor, Barack Obama, gave Iran some $150 billion as part of the “nuclear deal” that included access to bank accounts, cold hard cash payments, and other assets.
The AP rated the president’s claim as “false.”
As Newsmax reported:
The AP rated Trump’s claim that the U.S. gave Iran $150 billion as false, noting that the deal freed Iran from sanctions and unfroze its money abroad, and that the $1.8 billion the U.S. did give to Iran was to pay off a debt from the 1970s that had accumulated over $1 billion in interest. Trump said that the recent Iranian missile attack on Iraqi military bases that house U.S. troops were funded by money that the Obama administration “made available” to Iran.
In an address to the nation on Wednesday which the AP said “fell short on facts,” President Trump noted that Iranian missiles fired at two Iraqi military bases housing U.S. forces were paid for by money “made available” to Iran by the previous administration. It was a claim the AP labeled “as dubious as it was provocative.”
The bogus fact check drew the attention of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who called out the newswire service as a shill and propagandist for our enemies.
“To serve as essentially apologists for the enemy of America, it’s really sad,” Cruz said on “Fox News @ Night” on Wednesday.
“I get that they don’t like Donald Trump. That is not lost on anybody. The media has lost their minds, many congressional Democrats have lost their minds,” he told Fox News.
“Listen, here’s a very simple principle: money is fungible,” said Cruz.
“Under the catastrophic Obama Iran Nuclear Deal, the United States allowed between $100 billion and $150 billion to flow directly into Iran,” he said.
“The Obama administration sent $1.7 billion in cash, in unmarked bills, on pallets in the dead of night on a plane flown into Iran…” he recounted.
“Money is fungible and when you flood the Ayatollah — who is chanting ‘death to America’ — with over $100 billion, in a very real sense that money and the Obama administration allowed to flow into Iran is what helped fund those missiles that were attacking our servicemen and women [on Tuesday] night,” Cruz concluded, referring to Iranian assets unfrozen as part of the deal.
Even Obama admitted that Iran was gaining access to that kind of money in an interview with The Atlantic.
Obama said Iran “has $150 billion parked outside the country,” arguing that not all of its funds under sanctions will be unfrozen immediately because “unwinding the existing restraints… takes a certain amount of time.”
Every single time an American media outlet allows its Trump hate to outweigh its journalistic integrity when it comes to the president’s dealings with enemy nations, it amounts to a propaganda coup for the bad guys. It’s disgusting, it’s pathetic, and it sure does look a lot like treason.
Even if the numbers are slightly off — and their not — who cares? Obama shouldn’t have been giving a known state sponsor of terrorism and murderer of American citizens one red cent, let alone pallets of cash and access to billions more.
We don’t need the AP to ‘fact-check’ that.
See: UNCOVERED: Obama Secretly Sent Additional $1.3 BILLION To Iran (TOTAL = $1.7Bln)
