Sometimes, I really miss Gilda Radner and her many Saturday Night Live characters (e.g. Roseanne Rosannadanna, Lisa Loopner). Each was guaranteed to bring a smile to your face.  My favorite, however, was Emily Litella, the hard of hearing guest commentator on Weekend Update. Once informed she had misunderstood the question, she would close with her trademark line, “Never mind.”  This morning, I missed her more than ever.

I was reminded of the Emily Litella character when Donald Trump announced he had seen a “top secret” video of palettes of cash being unloaded from a plane in Iran as ransom for four U.S. hostages.  At a campaign rally in Florida, Trump said:

I’ll never forget the scene this morning. Iran — I don’t think you’ve heard this anywhere but here — Iran provided all of that footage, the tape of taking that money off that airplane, right? $400 million in cash.”

Now here’s the amazing thing. Over there, where that plane landed, top secret, they don’t have a lot of paparazzi. You know, the paparazzi doesn’t do so well over there, right? And they have a perfect tape done by obviously a government camera, and the tape is of the people taking the money off the plane, right? That means that in order to embarrass us further, Iran sent us the tapes, right? It’s a military tape. It’s a tape that was a perfect angle, nice and steady. Nobody getting nervous because they’re going to be shot because they’re shooting a picture of money pouring off a plane.

There’s a good reason we only heard it from Trump.  It was not true. Despite the fact, several news outlets and national security experts immediately responded no such video existed, Trump repeated the story Thursday afternoon at a rally in Portland, Maine.

Finally, after no evidence of the video surfaced and his own campaign staff admitted he was referring to a b-roll video of the detainees’ release in Geneva, Switzerland, Trump tweeted the following this morning.

The plane I saw on television was the hostage plane in Geneva, Switzerland, not the plane carrying $400 million in cash going to Iran!

Donald, you could have saved a lot of keystrokes if you’d only tweeted, “NEVER MIND!”

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP