This is a great example of the current state, and competence, of American Journalism. Worse yet, this example shows the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, didn’t even know what’s going on, and Vice-Presidential Candidate Tim Kaine also joins the crew of the clueless.

CNN and The Washington Post are both making an absurd attack Donald Trump story out of the most simple and easy to prove claim.

Donald Trump said there was video (yes, that’s a screen grab of the video above), put out by Iran, showing the United States sending pallets of cash in exchange for U.S. hostages.

Trump stated the Iranian’s were using the video to “embarrass the President“. The Washington Post and CNN jumped on the Trump statement and immediately decried it as ridiculous and set out to prove the claim false:

(Via Washington Post) […] Trump first mentioned this footage from the Iranian government during a rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., on Wednesday. Several senior U.S. officials involved in the Iran negotiations told the Associated Press they weren’t aware of any such video, and there was speculation that perhaps Trump saw it during one of the classified security briefings provided to presidential nominees, although those briefings have not yet begun. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who was traveling in Argentina on Thursday, told reporters that he was unaware of any such video, according to the Associated Press. (read more)

Here’s the presentation from Brian Stelter of CNN:

>> Today’s WashPost headline: “Trump continues to claim, with no evidence, that Iran released a video of a cash transfer from the U.S.”

>> Tomorrow morning’s news tonight, via CBS: Hillary Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine tells Norah O’Donnell, “I have no idea what he’s talking about… It doesn’t exist.”

>> Now the pressure is on Trump’s running mate Mike Pence. He’s live on the “Today” show with Savannah Guthrie tomorrow morning. What will he say about this?

Here’s the video, and you can see the pallets of cash at 11:00 (prompted):

You really should read the Jenna Johnson and Tom Bell article to see the scope of their shark jumping, and also fathom the insufferable inanity of our own government not to know immediately that Iran had indeed produced a full length feature documentary, airing on state run tv, showing exactly what Donald Trump said the Iranian’s aired:

(Read the WaPo Story Here)

Now, we don’t know where Donald Trump might have caught the clip of the video, but we do know it was widely discussed several months ago when the hostages were released. The Iranian TV ran it with a title “The Rules of The Game” etc. We saw it on BBC TV during a segment discussing the release of the prisoners.

Good Grief – It’s on You-Tube. AND, if we remember correctly, it was also hosted and discussed by MEMRI tv at one point. Any reasonable journalist search for data would have found it easily, or at least the discussions of it.

The Video is also in a BBC Journalist twitter feed. The short and the full version of the Iranian Documentary.

Here’s another version: