Thread: Trump's remarks about Sweden create debate and confusion

Trump's remarks about Sweden create debate and confusion

By Michael Edison Hayden
Dean Schabner
Feb 19, 2017, 4:50 PM ET

President Trump was speaking "in general," not about a specific incident when he referred to "what's happening last night in Sweden" at a campaign-style event, a White House spokeswoman said today.

The specific reference was to a report he had seen the night before, but he was talking about "rising crime and recent incidents, in general," Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

Trump made the remark Saturday while criticizing refugee policies in Europe during a rally in Florida.

"Here's the bottom line we have to keep our country safe," Trump started, before pivoting to the subject of Europe. "When you look at what's happening in Germany, when 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."

Trump then listed several European cities that have suffered high profile terror attacks, including Paris and Brussels.

The context of his remarks led many social media users, including Carl Bildt, a former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden, to assume that Trump meant there had been a terror attack in Sweden the night before.

"Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound," Bildt wrote on Twitter, referring to the fact that no high profile attack had occurred in Sweden the night before his speech.

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Sweden's embassy in Washington contacted the State Department today to ask for clarification about Trump's comment, Catarina Axelsson, a spokeswoman for Sweden's ministry of foreign affairs, told ABC News.

"We just contacted the State Department just to get some clarification of what he's referring to," she said.

Axelsson said it was unclear to the ministry what Trump was talking about. She said there were no incidents that they were aware of, nor has any terror threat level gone up in Sweden.

A local newspaper in Sweden published a list of events that happened on Friday that appeared to have no connections to any terror-like activity, The Associated Press reported.

Sweden's Security Police said that nothing had happened to change the country's terror threat level.

"Nothing has occurred which would cause us to raise that level," agency spokesman Karl Melin told the AP.

But conservatives defended Trump, noting that he never said that a terror attack had occurred in Sweden, only that the country was "having problems like they never thought possible" as a result of admitting refugees.

Other analysts noted that Trump was possibly attempting to discuss something entirely different: a purported rise in crime that has occurred in Sweden.

One night earlier, FOX News aired a segment about a documentary that highlights alleged problems that have occurred as a result of admitting refugees, including rape and gun violence.

Trump has frequently praised FOX News, and made favorable references to the network in a recent press conference.

The comment about Sweden is not the first time that the administration has created a degree of confusion by either misspeaking or including incomplete information in remarks centered around refugees or terrorism.

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, was forced to clarify a statement she made in an interview earlier this month on MSNBC when she referred to the "Bowling Green massacre," an event that never occurred.

Conway wrote on Twitter that she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists."

White House press secretary Sean Spicer also repeatedly referred to a terror attack in Atlanta before later clarifying that he meant to say Orlando.

ABC News' Mary Bruce contributed to this report.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump...ry?id=45596087

| Trump comment about immigration 'problems' baffles Sweden

Sun Feb 19, 2017 | 4:24pm EST
By Anna Ringstrom and Andy Sullivan | STOCKHOLM/WASHINGTON

U.S. President Donald Trump's suggestion that Sweden experienced an immigration-related security incident prompted a baffled response from the Scandinavian country on Sunday as diplomats asked for an explanation and citizens responded with amusement.

Trump, who in his first weeks in office has tried to sharply tighten U.S. borders on national security grounds, cited Sweden as a country that had experienced problems with immigrants in remarks at a rally on Saturday.

"You look at what's happening last night in Sweden," Trump said. "Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They're having problems like they never thought possible."

That appeared to confuse the Swedish government, which asked the U.S. State Department to explain what the new president meant.

"We are trying to get clarity," Swedish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Catarina Axelsson said.

The State Department said it did not comment on diplomatic communications.

Trump has been widely criticized for making assertions with little supporting evidence.

In recent months, he has argued that more than 3 million people voted fraudulently in the U.S. election, an assertion that election officials say is false, and incorrectly stated that he won the election by the most decisive margin in decades.

Swedish news sources made no mention of a recent terrorism attack or other high-profile crime in the country.

"Nothing spectacular happened in Sweden on Friday," wrote the Local, an English-language website in Sweden.

Fox News, a U.S. cable news channel that has sometimes been cited favorably by Trump, ran a report on Friday night about alleged migrant-related crime problems in the country.

Sweden's crime rate has fallen since 2005, official statistics show, even as the country has taken in hundreds of thousands of immigrants from war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom appeared to respond to Trump's latest statement by posting on Twitter an excerpt of a recent speech in which she said democracy and diplomacy "require us to respect science, facts and the media."

Her predecessor was less circumspect.

"Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound," former Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter.

Other Swedes mocked Trump's remark on Twitter using the hashtag #LastNightInSweden, posting pictures of reindeer, Swedish meatballs and people assembling the country's famous IKEA furniture.

"#lastnightinsweden my son dropped his hotdog in the campfire. So sad!" Twitter user Adam Bergsveen wrote.

(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom in Stockholm Andy Sullivan in Washington; Editing by David Goodman and Peter Cooney)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN15Y0QH

Last Night in Sweden’? Trump’s Remark Baffles a Nation

By SEWELL CHAN
FEB. 19, 2017

LONDON — Swedes reacted with confusion, anger and ridicule on Sunday to a vague remark by President Trump that suggested that something terrible had occurred in their country.

During a campaign-style rally on Saturday in Florida, Mr. Trump issued a sharp if discursive attack on refugee policies in Europe, ticking off a list of places that have been hit by terrorists.

“You look at what’s happening,” he told his supporters. “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?”

Not the Swedes.

Nothing particularly nefarious happened in Sweden on Friday — or Saturday, for that matter — and Swedes were left baffled.

“Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound,” Carl Bildt, a former prime minister and foreign minister, wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Trump did not state, per se, that a terrorist attack had taken place in Sweden.

But the context of his remarks — he mentioned Sweden right after he chastised Germany, a destination for refugees and asylum seekers fleeing war and deprivation — suggested that he thought it might have.

“Sweden,” he said. “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.”

Contrary to Mr. Trump’s allegations, nearly all of the men involved in terrorist assaults in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, in Brussels on March 22 last year, and in Nice, France, on July 14, were citizens of France or Belgium.

As the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet noted, Twitter users were quick to ridicule Mr. Trump’s remark, with joking references to the Swedish Chef, the “Muppets” character; Swedish meatballs; and Ikea, the furniture giant.

Others speculated that Mr. Trump might have been influenced by a Fox News interview of Ami Horowitz, a filmmaker who asserts that migrants in Sweden have been associated with a crime wave, by the correspondent Tucker Carlson. “They often times try to cover up some of these crimes,” Mr. Horowitz said, arguing that those who try to tell the truth about the situation are shouted down as racists and xenophobes.

(Mr. Carlson interjected, “The masochism of the West knows no bounds at all.”)

Mr. Horowitz said, “Sweden had its first terrorist Islamic attack not that long ago, so they’re now getting a taste of what we’ve been seeing across Europe already.”

It was not clear what he was referring to. In 2010, a suicide bomber struck central Stockholm, injuring two people. The bomber, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, 28, was an Iraqi-born Swede who had developed an affinity for Al Qaeda. But that attack occurred long before the current wave of migrants fleeing war and deprivation.

Sweden has a long history of welcoming refugees — Jews, Iranians, Eritreans, Somalis, Kurds and people from the former Yugoslavia, among others — but even some of the most tolerant and idealistic Swedes have raised questions about whether the country can absorb so many newcomers so quickly.

Henrik Selin, political scientist and deputy director of the Swedish Institute, a state agency dedicated to promoting Sweden globally, said he was puzzled by Mr. Trump’s remarks.

“I do not have a clue what he was referring to,” he said in a telephone interview. “Obviously, this could be connected to the fact that there has been a lot of negative reporting about Sweden, since Sweden has taken in a lot of refugees.”

The country processed 81,000 asylum seekers in 2014, 163,000 in 2015 and 29,000 last year, with another 25,000 to 45,000 expected this year, according to the Swedish Migration Agency.

Mr. Selin completed a study recently focusing on negative news reports about Sweden’s intake of refugees. It found numerous exaggerations and distortions, including reports falsely claiming that Sharia law was predominant in parts of the country and that some immigrant-heavy neighborhoods were considered “no-go zones” by the police.

“Those reports were highly exaggerated and not based in facts,” Mr. Selin said. “Some of the stories were very popular to spread in social media by people who have the same kind of agenda — that countries should not receive so many refugees.”

As for the cover-up alleged by Mr. Horowitz, Mr. Selin said: “That kind of claim has been in the political debate for 15 years now. But nobody has been able to prove there is a cover-up. On the contrary, the fact is that crime rates are going down.”

He added: “Swedish authorities have nothing to gain from hiding the truth. We are quite keen to ensure that the debate and the story about our country is fact-based and nuanced. We are more than happy to talk about the challenges our country faces as well as the things that are going well.”

Asked about Mr. Trump’s comment, Anna Kinberg Batra, the leader of the opposition Moderate Party, said in a statement, “President Trump has to answer himself for his statements, why he makes them and based on what facts.”

Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom declined to comment because, her press secretary, Erik Wirkensjo, said, “It’s hard to say what Trump is talking about.”

In an essay in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the journalist Martin Gelin speculated that “Trump might have gotten his news from the countless right-wing media in the United States that have long been reporting that Sweden is heading for total collapse.”

He added: “Among Trump supporters, there are common myths that Sweden is in a state of chaos after taking in refugees from the Middle East. These are incorrect, made up and gravely misleading news items like this have spread to right-wing sites like Breitbart, Human Events, Drudge Report and Fox News, as well as the popular conservative radio programs that reach millions of listeners every day.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/w...-a-nation.html

LOL!!! Fake News!!! This story is in every newspaper and was the main topic of every news show today. Trump stirs the whole world with a rally statement about crime in Sweden due to refugees and immigrants that he saw documented on Fox News "last night". The documentary aired on Friday night.

The CORRUPT MEDIA has become a complete bevvy of idiots, nincompoops and feigned hysterics.

Trump let them rant and rave, prattle and cackle all day. He authorized a vague "probably" through the White House press office. Then,

BOOM!!

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 16m16 minutes ago

My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?...Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Now the whole world knows exactly what he's talking about and will google the Fox News Documentary showing all the crime caused by refugees and immigrants in Sweden.

Trump can now go to dinner with a very real "what a good boy am I" and have a wonderful evening laughing at the CORRUPT MEDIA and the oh so uninformed Prime Minister of Sweden, who should know all about "what's happening in Sweden" and should know about the Fox News documentary on Sweden and the crime its people are enduring from refugees and immigrants the Prime Minister is letting into Sweden.

This just proves the press hears what it wants to hear. Who is confused I understood what Trump said. lol We Trump supporters are supposed to be the uneducated ones.