Trump's Amusing Big Dumb Lie

When Donald Trump started describing a video that he watched of a plane where money was being off-loaded to Iran, discussing it as if it were very secret and not something everyone knows about, he created ripples of speculation: Was he now passing on classified information from briefings? What is he even talking about? Does this video exist?

But nope, that isn't what happened:

A Trump campaign spokeswoman told The Washington Post early Thursday that the businessman was, in fact, talking about the video from Geneva. She did not explain why he claimed it was a top secret video from Iran.

The video was “merely the b-roll footage included in every broadcast” of the prisoner release, spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed. Hicks did not respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.

This means that Trump told his audience a half-dozen things about the tape that aren’t accurate. The video he saw was not shot in Iran, it did not show the exchange of cash, it was not “top secret,” it was not “a military tape,” and it was not “provided by Iran.” Nor was it released to embarrass the United States.

None of what he said was actually true. Not Iran, not top secret. Weird, right? And he even did this stupid thing again today in Portland, ME--mentioning the b-roll of a thing that was not clandestine or a drop in Iran or filmed by Iranians or even really even remotely embarrassing to the US any way as if it were all those things. The intelligence community, you think, wouldn't be amused, but they kind of are. Because it is literally laughable--this was a transfer of funds so not secret that Secretary of State John Kerry had it on his website. A person would have to be incapable of research (oh hey, Wall Street Journal!)or probably just not interested in details--right about January when it happened, to have missed this thing that some folks want to blow up. Which includes Donald (so prepared to be President--believe me!)Trump.

Moments of Amazing and Short-Lived Grace

Let's talk now, honest people, about how short and contentious our moments of revelation are, and how they collapse under the weight of our ponderous human frailty--no wait. Let's don't. The song "Amazing Grace" is a beautiful song about turning over one's life through a thunderbolt of awareness of what one is now and what one wishes to be.

The author of that song was a slaver who was saved and became an abolitionist. That song is an autobiography of a turning point in a life. But more than that, it is a song about getting awakened. The people who lost their lives June 17th were awake in their faith. That song has been sung at many a Christian burial, and played beautifully by that least-loved of instruments, the bagpipes, at the funerals of soldiers, cops, and firefighters. It's a song we associate with the hope that this awake life was well-lived and that this soul comes finally home.

But let's not get too much overtaken with that song, although in that instant our President went and took us all to church. Let's consider the eulogy that he delivered for Pastor Clementa Pinckney about the arc of history within the Black church:

This should go viral--Maddow: Acorn and Climategate scandals were BS.

Lots of right-wing claims are....bull. Wow. Weirdly, pointing this out is necessary. Why more people don't automatically see this, I don't know.