By Amber Phillips
Nov. 29, 2017
"Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!”
“Muslim destroys a statue of Virgin Mary!”
“Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!”
Those are the inflammatory headlines of three videos circulating on social media Wednesday. They appeared not in the timelines of angry partisans fighting each other on Twitter, but on the Twitter account of the president of the United States.
President Trump's decision to share these unverified videos, which came from a far-right British activist who has been convicted of religiously aggravated harassment, earned him rare condemnation from a close ally. British Prime Minister Theresa May said Trump was “wrong” to share material that drives “hateful narratives.”
(My Twitter settings to block sensitive content blocked the president's tweets.)
But wait, why was Trump sharing these videos? Good question. We don't have an answer to that, but here are a few, not-mutually-exclusive theories.
1. He wanted to rev up his base: On Tuesday, Trump attacked congressional Democratic leaders as weak on crime and immigration. He said he wouldn't negotiate with them to keep the government open, significantly upping the chance of a shutdown next month.
The video and that political firestorm are both a return to the “us vs. them” framing that was the bread and butter of Trump's 2016 campaign. But why is he doubling down on that now? That brings us to our next point.
2. He wanted to distract from any legislative losses: Republicans are plowing through a tax bill, but there's a real risk that they could fail to pass one. Which means there's a real risk that Trump ends his first year without any major legislative accomplishments.
(Sidenote: The irony of Trump shifting the discussion away from Congress right now is that Republicans actually had a good day with their tax bill on Tuesday; they passed it out of committee and won over some key “no” votes.)
3. He wanted to remind people of a narrative he built during the campaign: Right before his inauguration, 56 percent of Americans said they expected him to do a “good” or “excellent” job dealing with the threat of terrorism, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Fast forward 10 months, and 55 percent of voters said Trump is not doing a good job of dealing with terrorism. Trump, who is obsessed with polls, could sense he has some ground he needs to make up.
4. He believes Muslims are a threat: As a candidate, Trump openly considered banning all Muslims from entering the United States, putting their names on a registry and surveilling their mosques. On Wednesday, reporters asked Trump's aides whether the president thinks Muslims are a threat.
They suggested Trump tried to put his concern about Muslims into policy by banning people from several majority-Muslim countries: “The president has addressed these issues with the travel order,” his deputy press secretary said.
Why does Trump have a problem with reality?
Trump shared those videos with his 44 million Twitter followers. But they are unverified; it's not even clear what the videos purport to show really happened.
Pushing misleading statements as if they are fact is a pattern for Trump. The Post's Fact Checker team calculated that the president made 1,628 false or misleading claims in his first 298 days in office.
(Trump's misleading claims over the past 10 months.)
Lately, he has really been on a roll. He has also questioned the veracity of that “Access Hollywood” tape that caught him bragging about sexually assaulting women, which he apologized for during the campaign.
He has even recently questioned whether Barack Obama's birth certificate is real. But here's the thing: According to our White House team and the New York Times, he has pushed these conspiracy theories behind closed doors. With his aides. In private.
So, if he's not telling falsehoods for political purposes, it raises another question: Does the president have a grasp on reality? The Fix's Aaron Blake has distilled this into a theory, “Stupid or Liar.” Basically, he says: “Either Trump is lying or he truly doesn't grasp basic facts and the implausibility of his own conspiracy theories. Whatever you think about Trump, neither is a quality you want in the leader of the free world.”
The Washington Post,
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