John Kerry Calls on Media to Label Trump Claim Iran Received $150 Billion ‘a Lie’

On Sunday’s broadcast of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” former Secretary of State John Kerry said the media has to “stop dealing with questions on Donald Trump’s lies” about the Obama administration’s Iran deal.

Partial transcript as follows:

KERRY: Well, what I was really saying, I think, first of all, Margaret, you are an expert at this. You were there. You know that the president’s tweet is a lie. And the president tweeted this morning, because I am coming on the show and he knew you’d ask me the question or he’d push you in a place where you did ask the question. You and the media, I think, need to call a lie a lie. You know–

BRENNAN: Mr. Secretary, I asked you that question in 2015 too.

KERRY: –they didn’t get $150 billion. No- no- no. But let me just finish. You know- yes. And I’ll- I’ll answer that. I was saying clearly some money from the budget of Iran is going to go to the IRGC. It always has. That’s no surprise. But the truth is and President Trump- I- I- well, he probably doesn’t know this, but the fact is his own defense intelligence agency in 2017 testified to the Congress that very, very little money actually went to the IRGC at all. Most of the money went to the economy of Iran, which is precisely what I said and what we all said. So, the IRGC has never had a problem getting money. But the fact is Donald Trump keeps saying they got $150 billion. A lie. He keeps saying that all of that money went to pay for it. It did not. His own defense intelligence agency says most of the money went for the economy of the country. So, you know, we have to stop dealing with questions on Donald Trump’s lies and start dealing with the reality of what is going on. The fact is–

BRENNAN: OK.

KERRY: –the vast proportion of that money–

BRENNAN: Yeah.

KERRY: –went to the economy of Iran and they’re always going to be funding the IRGC. There was no question about that.

BRENNAN: Right.

KERRY: And the IRGC budget has not gone up markedly as a result–

BRENNAN: OK.

KERRY: –of what happened with the agreement, period.

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