Christine wrote about how President Trump clarified his remarks about Sweden from his Saturday rally in Melbourne, Florida. Some in the media reported that the president was referring to a terrorist attack. The former Swedish prime minister asked if the president was under the influence of narcotics concerning the remarks. In fact, if the president had said that Sweden suffered a terrorist attack last Friday night when in fact they didn’t, then that would be a rather embarrassing trip up. The problem is that he didn’t. Here’s the transcript (via Palm Beach Post) [emphasis mine]:
Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound. https://t.co/XWgw8Fz7tj
— Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) February 19, 2017
Here's the bottom line. We've got to keep our country safe. You look at what's happening. 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. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They're having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what's happening in Brussels. You look at what's happening all over the world. Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris. We've allowed thousands and thousands of people into our country and there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing. So we're going to keep our country safe.
For some reason, journalists are claiming that Trump referred to a nonexistent terrorist attack in Sweden. Let's go to the transcript: pic.twitter.com/w6wAxEsuus
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) February 19, 2017
Did you see a reference to a terrorist attack in there? I don’t. Still, USA Today, Huffington Post, The Guardian, and NBC News all reported that the president was referencing some terror attack when in fact no such reference was made. Even some of these publications noted that the president didn’t specifically say “terror attack,” but went along with it anyway. The Trump White House says he as referring to the spike in crime in the country since they started taking in tens of thousands of refugees, so many that the nation’s welfare state began to buckle. Refugees are afforded the same access to benefits (housing, education, and health care etc.) as Swedish citizens, but the government soon found this influx to be unsustainable, leading to 80,000 being deported last year.
In January, Katie wrote about Ami Horwitz being beaten up by migrants speaking Arabic while reporting on the country’s rape epidemic. The Gatestone Institute had the numbers:
In 1975, the Swedish parliament unanimously decided to change the former homogeneous Sweden into a multicultural country. Forty years later the dramatic consequences of this experiment emerge: violent crime has increased by 300%.If one looks at the number of rapes, however, the increase is even worse. In 1975, 421 rapes were reported to the police; in 2014, it was 6,620. That is an increase of 1,472%.
Sweden is now number two on the global list of rape countries.
Now, President Trump should have used better language and he should have been clearer. Words matter. At the same time, the press went off the reservation for writing that Trump referenced a terror attack when he didn’t. Guy and The Blaze’s Dana Loesch mentioned this yesterday, with Loesch noting that this is a typical maneuver of the liberal media: Trump wasn’t precise with his statements about Sweden. There was no terror attack in country. So, therefore, everything in Sweden is fine. That’s precisely wrong.
(H/T Gabriel Malor)
