In journalism circles, The Associated Press is the ultimate straight shooter, mind numbingly non-partisan, and always down the middle. So imagine our shock in reading this lead sentence from the AP this morning:
"WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump can’t be counted on to give accurate information to Americans when violent acts are unfolding abroad."
AP FACT CHECK: Attack draws visceral Trump tweets, not facts
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump can’t be counted on to give accurate information to Americans when violent acts are unfolding abroad.
The latest deadly London attacks, like one in the Philippines last week, prompted visceral reactions from Trump instead of statements shaped by the findings of the U.S. intelligence and diplomatic apparatus. He got ahead of the facts emerging in Britain’s chaos Saturday and got it wrong in the Philippines case, calling the episode there a “terrorist attack” when it was not.
A look at some of his weekend tweets about the London attack and rhetoric that came from the president and his aides about climate change and more last week:
TRUMP: “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!” — tweet Saturday, soon after the rampage at the London Bridge and Borough Market that killed at least seven people and wounded dozens
THE FACTS: Trump’s tweet directly contradicted an earlier statement by his homeland security secretary that the travel restrictions blocked by U.S. courts do not constitute a ban.
“It’s not a travel ban, remember,” John Kelly told Fox News on May 28. “It’s the travel pause. What the president said, for 90 days, we were going to pause in terms of people from those countries coming to the United States that would give me time to look at additional vetting.” The administration has asked the Supreme Court address the court decisions holding up Trump’s plan to bar entry temporarily of people from a half dozen Muslim-majority countries.
Shortly before that tweet, Trump suggested terrorism was at play in the London attack, sharing on Twitter an unconfirmed report to that effect, well before British authorities said so. It is still not known whether the attackers were British citizens or immigrants and therefore whether a Trump-style freeze on entry of people from certain nations might have prevented the violence by three knife-wielding assailants, who were killed by police.
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