[Bolduan:] It's a recurring theme. When do words matter? Does anyone care about facts anymore? I ask it again today because President Trump is again spreading unsubstantiated stories about former President Obama. Trump tweeting this, "Just out that the Obama administration granted citizenship during the terrible Iran deal negotiation to 2,500 Iranians, including to government officials. How big and bad is that?" President Trump doesn't offer any evidence that he would have. The source of the story, at least on FOX News, is an Iranian cleric. CNN Money senior media reporter, Oliver Darcy, is here. Oliver, first off, cut through this for me. Where exactly does this come from?
[Oliver Darcy, Cnn Money Senior Media Reporter:] This seems to be another unsettling situation where the president is parroting a conspiracy theory that he heard in the media. In this case, FOX News ran a story on Monday and the story cited an Iranian news agency that cited an Iranian newspaper, that cited a single Iranian cleric, who made this wild assertion about the Iranian nculeaer negotiations. From there, it kind of caught fire. Sean Hannity shared it on Twitter. David Clarke, another FOX News personality, shared it on Twitter. It eventually jumped to the FOX News air waves on Tuesday morning. That's where "FOX & Friends" first broadcast the story. And just I think like two hours later, the president was tweeting about it and using it as a weird way to attack Obama.
[Bolduan:] So Obama administration Obama officials are denying it. It's always like where is the burden of proof when it comes to these stories.
[Darcy:] Right.
[Bolduan:] To prove the negative or to prove the positive. Is anyone offering evidence?
[Darcy:] There's some evidence here. Jeff Prescott, the former national security counsel
[Bolduan:] Evidence to the negative?
[Darcy:] Yes.
[Bolduan:] Yes.
[Darcy:] He shared some numbers with us, immigration numbers, that show that there was relative consistency between the number of Iranians naturalized before the Iranian nuclear deal and after the Iranian nuclear deal. In fact, it actually went down a little bit. But throughout the years, from the Bush administration to the Obama administration, there's consistency across the board. And they are saying this is totally just not true. It's absurd. They call this Jake Sullivan was on CNN last night and really went after the president for tweeting this. He made the point the president could call the State Department, the government officials that he's appointed and ask, hey, is this true, and they would tell him, no, this is not true. But instead, he relies on this thin FOX News report and puts it out there. It's quite disturbing.
[Bolduan:] It comes down to, once again, who do you trust? Do you trust the numbers coming from the federal agency that's in charge of it? Do you trust a FOX News report about another report about another report from one Iranian cleric? Who do you trust?
[Darcy:] The great thing is that FOX News' own commentator, the former Obama State Department spokesperson, told FOX News, "This sounds like B.S." That's an actual quote that they included towards the bottom of their story. And FOX News still ran with it, which is just really mind numbing.
[Bolduan:] Happy Fourth of July. It's great to see you, Oliver. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much. So, wow, speaking of while you get ready to fire up the grill and prepare for fireworks, law enforcement across the country is hard at work for you. What they're doing out of today's big celebrations and parades like this one in Chicago, and one about to get under way in D.C., happening right now. We'll take you there live. That's next.