Trump’s Iran Idiocy is the GOP’s Iran idiocy

I’m not surprised Trump thinks we “paid Iran $150 billion” as part of the nuclear deal.  All the nutso GOP candidates for President keep saying that we did, and Fox News keeps reporting it as if it were true.  Which it isn’t… not by a long shot.

Via Salon:

Trump proclaims his familiar boast that he is the best deal-maker ever and the best negotiator ever, and that the Obama administration completely botched the negotiation with Iran.  And then Trump graced us with an inside account of how he, as a master deal-maker, would have negotiated the agreement with Iran and obtained a much better outcome for America.

Primarily, Trump would have spared America from having to pay $150 billion to Iran.  (I won’t quibble with the dollar amount even though it is likely inaccurate).

As Trump explained, he would have said to the Iranians:

“Fellas, we [as America] owe $19 trillion [in debt].  We’re a country that has no money.  We can’t give you the $150 [billion dollars].”  The Iranians would have said, “But we want it!”  And Trump would have responded, “We can’t give it!  We don’t have it!  We don’t have it!”

Trump would have stood his ground and absolutely refused to pay the $150 billion.  At that point, the meeting would have broken-up with no agreement.  But then, two days later, the Iranians would have folded by calling Trump and saying, “Let’s make a deal.” Iran would then have agreed that America would not be required to pay the $150 billion.

Wow. Now there’s a genius negotiator for you. What an amazing display of virtuosity.

Unfortunately, however, there is one little problem with Trump’s entire analysis. And this problem is that the $150 billion was, in fact, readily available. The reason it was readily available is because all of this money actually belonged to Iran, not to America.  This was Iran’s own money.  This was Iranian money that America had seized and frozen. It was never American money. Not one penny. American money was never at stake. Rather, America was simply returning Iran’s own money that America had seized and was holding in frozen accounts pending the resolution of the sanctions against Iran.

Trump obviously had no clue that this money belonged to Iran.  Trump was utterly ignorant about the facts of the deal.  Yet this did not prevent Trump from spouting off and denouncing the deal to the American public. This is classic Trump. Even though he may appear to some to be authoritative, the truth is that his demeanor is superficial and he actually has no idea what he is talking about in substance.