Donald Trump admits he was wrong

That video of $400 million in American cash being unloaded off a plane in Iran? Turns out, Donald Trump didn't actually see it (because it doesn't actually exist).
In a rare admission of error, the Republican nominee tweeted Friday that what he thought was a plane carrying a U.S. government payment to Iran was actually just footage of four American prisoners arriving in Geneva, Switzerland, after they were freed from Iran.
Trump's concession came a day after President Obama insisted the $400 million sent to Iran was not "some nefarious deal," but part of the settlement of Iran's claim that the U.S. didn't follow through on a decades-old arms deal. The timing of the payment has raised eyebrows, however, as it happened on the same day in January that four American prisoners were released.
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Although Trump's campaign spokeswoman had already corrected her boss' claim of seeing the cash handover video on Thursday, clarifying that Trump was actually referring to the video from Geneva, Trump went ahead and said it again at a rally in Maine just hours later. "It was interesting because a tape was made, you saw that? With the airplane coming in?" Trump said. "Nice plane. And the airplane coming and the money coming off, I guess. That was given to us, has to be, by the Iranians." Oops.
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