RACISM/RELIGION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump shared videos supposedly portraying Muslims committing acts of violence on Twitter early Wednesday [11-29-17] morning, images that are likely to fuel anti-Islam sentiments popular among the president’s political base in the United States and 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 push out this type of content on such a powerful social media platform. But the videos are consistent with how Mr. Trump has approached Islam, particularly during the campaign, when he said, ‘Islam hates us’ during the 2016 presidential campaign and called for a ‘total and complete shutdown’ of Muslims coming to the United States…
The White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, defended the president’s tweets to reporters on Wednesday and said the president was talking about the need for national security and military spending.”
-Eileen Sullivan and Maggie Haberman, “Trump Shares Inflammatory Anti-Muslim Videos, and Britain’s Leader Condemns Them,” The New York Times online, Nov. 29, 2017 09:03am