Yesterday, GOP Rep. Ted Poe sat down with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins on Perkins’s podcast Washington Watch where they both complained about the United States’s deal to swap prisoners with Iran. Both were disgusted with the negotiation, and said that Ronald Reagan would never agree to such a deal.
“Long gone are the days of Ronald Reagan when we said, ‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists.’ Now we make all kinds of deals and it just appears that America comes out on the short end of the deal,” said Perkins.
Perkins apparently forgot about the Iran-Contra affair, the biggest scandal of Reagan’s presidency. The Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran in exchange for Iran’s assistance in the Lebanon Hostage situation. The administration then used the profits to support the “Contras” in Nicaragua, fighting the Sandinista government.
Not only did Reagan “negotiate with terrorists” much more literally than Obama, the administration did it illegally and covered it up. Nearly a year later, information was leaked that confirmed the deal. The administration “lost” possibly damning paperwork before Reagan took responsibility, despite previously claiming to have no knowledge of it.
Salon’s Paul Rosenberg said that Iran-Contra “got zero net hostages released, and one dead hostage’s body dumped… in return for 2,512 TOW anti-tank missiles, 18 Hawk anti-aircraft missiles and more than 240 Hawk spare parts.”
Listen to the exchange below, via Right Wing Watch:
Featured image via screen grab
FRANK
January 21, 2016 at 6:36 pm
Tony Perkins is a real POS!!!
JT Easy
January 21, 2016 at 10:34 pm
Luckily, the american right is history-challenged. It fits in with their many other challenges, and allows them to be led by men who don’t have their best interests at heart.
Daniel Guillot
August 20, 2016 at 10:12 am
hE DIDNT FORGET ANYTHING HE IS A FLAT OUT LIAR,,,,,
Without Reagan’s Treason, Iran Would Not Be a Problem
Tuesday, 26 November 2013 15:29 Republican attempts to sabotage a Democratic president’s deal with Iran are nothing new, however.
Just ask Jimmy Carter.
In 1980 Carter thought he had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr over the release of the fifty-two hostages held by radical students at the American Embassy in Tehran. Carter was confident that with Bani-Sadr’s help, he could end the embarrassing hostage crisis that had been a thorn in his political side ever since it began in November of 1979.
But Carter underestimated the lengths his opponent in the 1980 Presidential election, California Governor Ronald Reagan, would go to screw him over. Behind Carter’s back, the Reagan campaign worked out a deal with the leader of Iran’s radical faction – Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini – to keep the hostages in captivity until after the 1980 Presidential election.
This was nothing short of treason. The Reagan campaign’s secret negotiations with Khomeini – the so-called “October Surprise” – sabotaged Carter and Bani-Sadr’s attempts to free the hostages.