Trump did not acknowledge his own campaign had contradicted his story a day earlier. | AP Photo Trump repeats claim about nonexistent Iran footage

Despite Donald Trump’s claim of having seen video footage of the $400 million cash delivery to Iran having been acknowledge as false by his own campaign, the Manhattan billionaire kicked off a rally Thursday afternoon by repeating the tall tale.

At a rally Wednesday in Florida, Trump said Iran had captured video of the arrival of the cash payment from the United States, money the Republican nominee alleged was paid to free American prisoners held by the Iranian government despite the Obama administration's insistence there was no quid pro quo arrangement. Trump said he had seen the footage, which he said Iran released to “embarrass us further.”


But Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed to The Washington Post on Wednesday after the rally that the video to which the candidate referred was in fact simple B-roll footage from Geneva aired by Fox News, not a secret Iranian tape. Senior U.S. officials involved in the Iran negotiations told The Associated Press that they were unaware of any such Iranian footage, and Secretary of State John Kerry, at a news conference in Argentina, told reporters, “I obviously haven’t seen it if I am not aware if it.”

Despite all that, Trump once again spoke of the nonexistent footage at his rally Thursday in Portland, Maine. He told the crowd that the money, paid by the U.S. to settle a decades-old dispute over a military equipment order, would end up either funding terrorism or in the pockets of Iranian politicians, and he suggested that the payment was made in a combination of euros, Swiss francs and other currencies because “they probably don’t want our currency.”

“How stupid are we to allow this to continue to go on? To see what’s happening. And you know, it was interesting, because a tape was made. Right? You saw that, with the airplane coming in?” Trump said, without acknowledging that his own campaign had contradicted his story a day earlier. “And the airplane coming in and the money coming off, I guess. That was given to us, has to be, by the Iranians. And you know why the tape was given to us? Because they want to embarrass our country.

“And they want to embarrass our president, because we have a president who’s incompetent,” he continued. “They want to embarrass our president. I mean, who would ever think that they would be taking all of this money off the plane and then providing us with the tape? It’s only for one reason, and it’s very, very sad.”

Later Thursday afternoon, during a news conference at the Pentagon, President Barack Obama disputed Trump’s allegations about the payment and dismissed the story as “the manufacturing of outrage.” He pointed out that the White House had been up front about the payment in January when it occurred and that White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had spoken about it during a press briefing at the time.

"We don’t pay ransom for hostages,” Obama said, and suggested that the notion that the U.S. would reverse that longstanding policy in such a high-profile, public setting “defies logic.” He also said the timing of the cash delivery so close to the release of U.S. hostages was pure coincidence, the result of an opportunity to “clear accounts on a number of issues at the same time” presented by face-to-face meetings between American and Iranian officials.

“It's been interesting to watch this story surface. Some of you may recall, we announced these payments in January. Many months ago. There wasn't a secret. We announced them to all of you,” Obama said before offering a defense of the controversial nuclear agreement with Iran.

“If there is news to be made, why not have some of these folks who were predicting disaster say, you know, 'This thing actually worked.' Now that would be a shock. That would be impressive,” he continued. “But of course that wasn't going to happen. Instead what we have is the manufacturing of outrage in a story that we disclosed in January.”