On Fox News shortly after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's foreign policy speech today, former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton evaluated what the GOP frontrunner had to say about Iran's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
He also stated the inconvenient truth about the Obama administration's nuclear "deal" with Iran, namely that it puts the jihad-driven, terrorist-funding, death-to-America nation "on a highway to nuclear weapons" — a reality that the Barack Obama-defending press simply won't admit, at least partially because elements of the press, particularly alleged "journalists" at the Associated Press, helped clear the route for that highway:
Transcript, which contains Bolton's answer to a question the video cuts off about whether Trump's stance on the Iran nuclear deal "calms the concerns" of those who haven't heard him denounce it to this point (first 45 seconds; bolds are mine):
JOHN BOLTON: Well, I didn't have a text of the speech in front of me. I was just listening, so I may have heard it wrong. But it sounded to me like he did not say that he would except the deal and try to improve it. What I heard him say several times was, "Iran on will not get nuclear weapons." Now my view from the outset has been that signing this deal was a strategic mistake. I don't think it can be fixed or renegotiated. I think it should be repudiated. That's something Senator Cruz has said is his position. But the key is to say, "They will never get nuclear weapons," because the deal now puts them on a highway to nuclear weapons. Thought it was a strong statement.
The public needs to be continually reminded, which is why I continue to do it, that the establishment press is more than a cheerleader for the nuclear "deal" with Iran, which it considers a positive Obama administration accomplishment, even a "historic" one. The press is part of the reason why things have gotten to this dangerous point.
In November 2013, on a Fox News Sunday broadcast, the Associated Press's Julie Pace reveled in the fact that the wire service knew of secret discussions between the U.S. and Iran, and withheld that knowledge from the public for eight months:
JULIE PACE, AP: March is when we were first tipped off that the U.S. and Iran have been having a high level meeting in Oman. And that meeting happened critically before Rouhani, the more moderate cleric was elected. We subsequently learned that there were four other meetings that happened after Rouhani was elected over the course of this fall. And those are the meetings that really laid the ground work for this agreement that we saw last night.
... And a lot of the allies were surprised in some way that this deal seemed to come together a little more quickly than maybe they expected, and that's in large part because these meetings had already happened.
The related AP story tried to excuse this journalistic failure:
The AP was tipped to the first U.S.-Iranian meeting in March shortly after it occurred, but the White House and State Department disputed elements of the account and the AP could not confirm the meeting. The AP learned of further indications of secret diplomacy in the fall and pressed the White House and other officials further. As the Geneva talks appeared to be reaching their conclusion, senior administration officials confirmed to the AP the details of the extensive outreach.
At the time, I wrote: "Translation: They didn't report it until the Obama administration said it would be okay to report it."
The post moved Paul Colford, AP's Vice President and Director of Media Relations, to issue a misdirecting blog post with the following claim: "AP did not sit on the story for several months. We aggressively pursued the story throughout that period, trying everything we could to get it to the wire."
Note that Colford did not deny that the Obama administration asked AP to hold the story. If he had, he would have been lying.
That's because a writer at another publication tweeted the following when she learned of the controversy: "We both had versions of it independently early & were asked to not publish til end of Iran talks." Oops.
In her braggadocious apperance on Fox, Julie Pace boasted of how "this deal seemed to come together a little more quickly than maybe they expected." That's because the Obama administration knew that it had muzzled the people who would have reported on the negotiations. The reaction to their existence might have delayed or derailed them.
So the fact that this "deal" exists and came about as quickly as it did largely explains why, as John Bolton asserted, Iran is now "on a highway to nuclear weapons." The Assocated Press has contributed mightily to where we are with Iran today. Thanks to AP holding a story which should have been published (the fact that the administration asked them not to publish anything is in and of itself a story by any journalistic standard), the world is quickly becoming a far more dangerous place — and they're clearly proud of it.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
