Plan B Forum

Trump Shares Inflammatory Anti-Muslim Videos, and Britain’s Leader Condemns Them

WASHINGTON — President Trump shared videos on Twitter early Wednesday morning that supposedly portray Muslims committing acts of violence, images that are likely to fuel anti-Islam sentiments popular among the president’s political base in the United States and that prompted the office of Britain’s prime minister to issue a statement condemning the tweets.

Mr. Trump retweeted the video posts from an ultranationalist British party leader, Jayda Fransen, who has previously been charged in the United Kingdom with “religious aggravated harassment,” according to news reports. The videos were titled: “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!” “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!” and “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!”

It is unusual to see an American president promote this type of content. [There's that famous "British understatement"...it's not "unusual" it's "unprecedented"...]But the videos are consistent with how Mr. Trump has approached Islam, particularly during the 2016 presidential campaign, when he said, "Islam hates us” and called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims coming to the United States.

It was unclear on Wednesday morning whether the perpetrators in the videos were Muslim, as Ms. Fransen suggested.

The White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, defended the president’s tweets to reporters and said the president was talking about the need for national security and military spending.

“The threat is real,” Ms. Sanders said. “The threat needs to be addressed. The threat has to be talked about, and that’s what the president is doing in bringing that up.”

British politicians were quick to condemn Mr. Trump’s tacit endorsement of the videos.

The office of Theresa May, the British prime minister, said, “It is wrong for the president to have done this.”

In a statement, the office also said of the far-right party Britain First, for which Ms. Fransen is the deputy: “Britain First seeks to divide communities by their use of hateful narratives that peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people.”

David Lammy, a member of Parliament for the Labour Party, echoed that statement on Twitter. “Trump sharing Britain First. Let that sink in. The President of the United States is promoting a fascist, racist, extremist hate group whose leaders have been arrested and convicted. He is no ally or friend of ours.”

This reaction is exactly what James R. Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said he feared when he saw the president’s Twitter posts.

“It has all kinds of ripple effects, both in terms of perhaps inciting or encouraging anti-Muslim violence, and as well causes, I think, our friends and allies around the world to wonder about the judgment of the president of the United States,” Mr. Clapper told CNN on Wednesday.

Britain First was co-founded by a man who later supported Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and was part of the efforts to spread anti-Clinton news on social media.

Ms. Fransen thanked Mr. Trump for promoting her message in a Twitter post on Wednesday.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is just the worst. At least Sean Spicer was a likeable liar.

Crackpot wrote:What can I say I’ll take someone who is troubled they’re selling thier soul over someone who isn’t.

Crackpot wrote:He showed signs of a conscience. Something I can’t say about the other one.

rubato wrote:

Crackpot wrote:He showed signs of a conscience. Something I can’t say about the other one.

Give examples. I can't think of any.

yrs,
rubato

Sue U wrote:

rubato wrote:

Crackpot wrote:He showed signs of a conscience. Something I can’t say about the other one.

Give examples. I can't think of any.

yrs,
rubato

He quit because Trump brought The Mooch onto the comms team, and for him that was the last straw.

When Donald Trump pressed send on a tweet to @theresamay, he thought he had aimed it at the prime minister of one of Washington’s closest allies. He wrote: “Don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”

Trump subsequently deleted that tweet and tried again 20 minutes later, this time using the correct handle, @theresa_may.

The owner of @theresamay is Theresa May Scrivener, a 41-year-old woman who lives in Bognor and has six Twitter followers. She slept through the excitement.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ter-tirade

One of the more surprising critiques came from Nigel Farage, the former leader of the U.K. Independence Party, or UKIP. Farage has been a strong supporter of Trump’s — he is a “person of interest” in the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia — whose own far-right brand of politics has often centered on anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment. But the videos were a step too far for Farage, who told Leading Britain’s Conversation (LBC) radio station that Trump had made a “mistake.”

“I do think these videos are very bad taste and he showed poor judgement,” Farage said. “Of that I have no doubt at all.”

“There are times when perhaps its better to put your hands up and say ‘I got this wrong’ and frankly try to move on,” he added. [Have you met Donald Trump?]