Trump Tweets Anti-Muslim Propaganda, Rebuked By UK PM
President Trump on Wednesday shared three inflammatory anti-Muslim videos on Twitter posted by a far-right British activist.
The videos whose authenticity could not be independently verified were first shared by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, which bills itself as a political party but has been widely condemned as an extremist group that targets mosques and Muslims.
His tweets have drawn backlash from around the world, including a sharp rebuke from the British PM.
Prime Minister Theresa May said in a statement that “[i]t [wa]s wrong for the president to have done this.”
The first video Trump shared claimed to show a Muslim migrant beating up a Dutch boy on crutches. In this case the videos’ credibility was cast in doubt when it emerged that Dutch police and media never suggested the attacker was a Muslim immigrant in their coverage of the incident.
The second was captioned “Muslim destroys a statute of Virgin Mary,” and the third read “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!”
Contrary to UK’s reaction, the White House is defending President Trump’s retweets of the videos.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders insisted the president was not pushing an anti-Muslim propaganda or offering an endorsement of the group, but instead making the case for national security.
“It’s important to talk about national security and national security threats,” Sanders said.
“The president sees different things to be a national security threat and he sees having strong borders as being one of the things that helps protect people in this country from some real threats we face.”
“Whether it’s a real video, the threat is real and that is what the president is talking about, that’s what the president is focused on, is dealing with those real threats and those are real no matter how you’re looking at it,” she said.
