Donald Trump confused a lot of people when he mentioned that a terror-related incident had occurred in Sweden on Saturday. While many were baffled, as nothing of the sort had actually happened, Trump tweeted that his information had come from a Fox News segment with conservative filmmaker Ami Horowitz.

DONALD TRUMP ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN SWEDEN COMMENT

“We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” Trump said to a crowd in an attempt to criticize Europe’s refugee policy. “Sweden, who would believe this?”

“Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound,” said former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt. Likewise, Sweden’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Caterina Axelsson said she knew of no “terror-linked major incidents.”

Trump took to Twitter to try to clarify his baffling statement. “My statement as to what’s happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast by @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden,” the president wrote.

“He was talking about rising crime and recent incidents in general — not referring to a specific incident,” said White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in an attempt to make sense of Trump’s words.

The segment on Fox with Horowitz was about her recently made documentary about Sweden’s refugee policy, and did not contain any breaking news. In fact, Sweden has not experienced any incidents of terrorism by a refugee or someone of Muslim faith since 2010, and the crime rate has only increased by 4% since 2015, which has been attributed to computer fraud.

“We don’t have any information regarding what President Trump was referring to in his speech and we don’t want to speculate. We have asked U.S. officials for an explanation,” Monica Enqvist, head of public diplomacy for the embassy, said in a statement.

Leave a comment

Read more about: