Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I want to paint a picture for you just for a moment. It takes place on a tarmac in the Zambian capital of Lusaka, just a few weeks ago, in fact. A small private jet arrives from Egypt. It lands there, hoping to go unnoticed because of what is on board that jet. But it does get noticed by Zambian authorities. They board the plane, and they find inside a cargo that sounds like something out of a James Bond movie. On board that plane is $5.7 million in U.S. currency, 602 bars of gold, five pistols, and 126 rounds of ammunition. To make the story even more bizarre, it turns out that the gold was not actually real. It was fake bars of gold. The currency is real, the ammunition is real, but the gold is fake. Zambia arrests 12 people, 6 of whom are Egyptian citizens. Immediately, as you can imagine, speculation begins about what is exactly going on. That is an interesting story, right? But the reason I tell you this story isn't because of what happened in Zambia. It is because of what happened next in Cairo. Six of these individuals were Egyptian citizens. The plane came from Egypt. So, of course, journalists in Cairo start to do some digging. A fact-checking platform named Matsadaash--I am probably butchering the pronunciation, but it is Arabic, roughly, for ``don't believe it.'' They report on the alleged involvement of former Egyptian security officials in the incident, but this kind of truth telling is just not allowed in Egypt today. Egypt is a closed society.…”