This article originally appeared on VICE News.
Swedish people have taken to social media to express their confusion over President Donald Trump’s allusion to a terror attack in their country that didn’t actually happen.
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“You look at what’s happening,” Trump told the crowd at a campaign-like rally in Melbourne, Florida on Saturday night. “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? Sweden,” the president continued. “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like the never thought possible. You look 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.”
Except, as Swedes pointed out on social media, nothing bad had happened the previous night in Sweden. “Sweden? Terror attack?” wrote former Prime Minister Carl Bildt on Twitter. “What has he been smoking? Questions abound.”
Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet dedicated its front page to the headline, “In English: This Happened in Sweden Friday Night Mr President,” along with a bulleted summary of that days’ news events, such as a car chase involving a drunk driver and an avalanche warning due to harsh weather.
Some asked whether perhaps Trump had confused Sweden with Sehwan in Pakistan, where more than 85 people died in a suicide bombing at a Sufi shrine on Friday.
Many have theorized that the president has a tendency to make public remarks based on what he’s seen on television on any given day. Given this, a school librarian who runs one of Sweden’s official Twitter accounts, wonderedwhether his comments were inspired by an interview aired Friday evening on Fox News with documentary-maker Ami Horowitz, whose recent film argues that there is a relationship between Sweden’s new refugee population and high crime rates.
The librarian, Emma, noted that the most pressing news in Sweden right now is actually about selecting their contestant for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
Trump was alluding to terror attacks in Europe to justify his frustration that a federal court two weeks ago blocked the implementation of a controversial executive order which temporarily banned foreigners from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.
Trump is not the first in his administration to refer to an attack that did not happen. His adviser, Kellyanne Conway recently urged viewers during an appearance on MSNBC to remember the Bowling Green Massacre (remarks she had made in the past during interviews with TMZ and Cosmopolitan). There was never a Bowling Green Massacre. In 2011 Federal agents arrested two Iraqi men in Bowling Green, Kentucky for conspiring to send money and weapons to al-Qaeda.
On Jan. 29, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer thrice alluded to a terror attack on Atlanta. There were bombings in Atlanta in the late 1990’s, but Spicer later clarified in an email to ABC News that he was actually talking about the attack on the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
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