March 26, 2021
But, in a speech February 28 to thousands of fans at the Conservative Political Action Convention in Orlando, Florida, Trump declared that Biden had lifted the sanctions. And he said it not just once, but five times.
The speech hit on all the familiar Trump themes such as the wall on the Mexican border and the fake ballots that stole the election last November.
But Trump reserved one section to discuss Iran or, rather, to discuss Biden’s alleged policy on Iran. And, over the course of a few sentences, he managed to say nothing that was true.
Halfway into his 90-minute speech, Trump said, “The new administration unilaterally withdrew our crippling sanctions on Iran, foolishly giving away all of America’s leverage before negotiations have even begun. Leave the sanctions, negotiate. Does anybody understand what I’m saying here? Are there any good business people? You don’t have to be good. Are there any bad business people? They [Biden] took off the sanctions! They took off the sanctions! They say, well, we’re going to not have any sanctions. Let’s negotiate a deal.”
Then he riffed on his theme that the election was stolen and said how he would have subdued Iran in the first week of his second term, if it had not been stolen. “Had we had a fair election, the results would have been much different and we would have had a deal with Iran within the first week,” Trump said. He had previously claimed that Tehran would see that it faced sanctions for another four years if Trump won and would therefore have cut its loses and agreed to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Trump.
Trump concluded, “They [Iran] wanted those sanctions off. He [Biden] took them off for nothing for nothing. Now you watch how tough they negotiate.”
In his speech, Trump also said Biden had stopped the deportation of illegal immigrant murderers, although Biden has actually made the priority for deportation major felons, including murderers, rapists and thieves the exact opposite of what Trump said.