Here we are again, then. On Saturday night Donald Trump spoke to supporters at a rally in Florida (the election’s over, we know, but maybe he just likes the ego boost he gets from preaching to the choir), and, once again, he made some pretty dodgy comments.
For a president who likes to cry ‘fake news’ on the regular whenever a media organisation reports something he doesn’t like, Trump himself has a fairly spurious relationship with ‘the facts’.
While defending his plan to ban travel into the United states from seven Muslim-majority countries, the American president used a characteristic Trumpian rhetorical technique, the parallel...
‘You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.’
‘What happened in Sweden?’ you may be wondering. The answer is, absolutely nothing at all. That’s right, just days after he held a scorching press conference in which he criticised the media and accused them of ‘LIES, LIES AND FAKE NEWS’, Donald Trump himself fell right into the alternative-fact-trap.
The world went into quizzical chin stroking emoji mode, trying to figure out what the hell Trump was on about. No terrorist attack, major crime or, even, significantly newsworthy event took place in Sweden on Friday night.
Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt summed it all up rather well:
Of course, Trump’s hardcore fan base are convinced that the conspiring left wing media are just trying to smear the president and cover up the so-called Swedish crisis.
Trump clarified his remarks, to use the term loosely, on Sunday night. In the vaguest possible terms, he tweeted that he was referring to ‘a story that was broadcast on @Foxnews concerning immigrants & Sweden.’
To be clear, Sweden has a population of around 9.5 million people and is thought to have taken in close to 200,000 refugees and migrants over the last few years. That’s more than any other country in Europe. As the BBC reports there have been some ‘isolated attacks on immigrants, as well as pro and anti- immigration demonstrations’ but no terrorist attacks have been recorded in Sweden since its open door policy on migration came into effect in 2013. There was, however, an incident in January last year in which a 22-year-old woman was killed by an asylum seeker. Overall, though, Sweden has relatively low crime rates.
Ah Sweden, it must be so awful over there with their government-funded healthcare, paid parental leave, renewable energy, solid integration policies and affordable childcare.
Of course, people everywhere think that Donald Trump’s remarks are hilarious and ‘Je Suis Ikea’ memes abound but, it’s not really very funny is it? Donald Trump is President of the United States and he has a total disregard for facts, truth and rigour. He doesn’t care if he misleads, misinforms or misrepresents, in fact it’s by hiding behind smoke and mirrors that he’s able to function.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.