President Trump. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Trump retweeted British xenophobe Katie Hopkins on Saturday morning, sharing her attacks on London Mayor Sadiq Khan and German news media after a migrant allegedly hacked his former roommate to death in Stuttgart, Germany.
Why it matters: This is at least the 4th time in recent months that Trump has promoted Hopkins' predominantly Islamophobic messages on social media to his 62.2 million Twitter followers. Trump has bitterly criticized Kahn, London's first Muslim mayor, and has worked since the beginning of his presidency to block Muslims from entering the United States through a travel ban that includes Syria. Saturday's retweets come weeks after Trump told 4 members of Congress, 2 of them Muslims, to "go back" to where they came from.
Hopkins' tweets:
- Reality check: Hopkins criticized Merkel for allowing refugees to enter Germany, and German media for its portrayal of the migrants. In the video, Hopkins highlights Thursday's attack, which she claims was carried out by a Syrian man with a machete or samurai sword. German authorities are trying to determine the attacker's ethnicity, and there's been no mention of a machete, German website DW.com reports.
- Reality check: Hopkins dubbed London “stab-city” and blamed Khan for the violence, referring to him as the “Mayor of Londonistan.” The BBC reports that although knife crime is on the increase across England and Wales, “It’s relatively unusual for a violent incident to involve a knife, and rarer still for someone to need hospital treatment.” Most violent crimes involve no weapon at all, it says.
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