“The Democrats and President Obama gave Iran 150 Billion Dollars and got nothing, but they can’t give 5 Billion Dollars for National Security and a Wall?”
— President Trump in a tweet, Dec. 12, 2018
This is an egregious version of a claim that President Trump has made repeatedly — about 30 times, according to our database of Trump’s false and misleading claims. We had originally looked into the details of the $150 billion for a fact check during President Barack Obama’s administration, fact-checked the claim during the 2016 presidential debatesand noted it in roundups of various Trump news conferencesand interviews.
Somehow it’s never been put to the Pinocchio Test. But if the president is going to keep getting this wrong, it’s time to give this falsehood a Pinocchio rating.
The Facts
There are two numbers that Trump loves to reference when discussing the international nuclear agreement negotiated with Iran when Obama was president: $150 billion and $1.7 billion. The latter was a cash transaction, said to be the settlement of a long-standing Iranian claim against the United States, with interest, that was curiously timed to arrive when Iran released four detained Americans. (We discussed this payment at length in this fact check.)
View the complete December 13 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.