From PBS NewsHour
November 30, 2017
World leaders and analysts say President Donald Trump’s retweets Wednesday of anti-Muslim videos from a far-right British political group crossed a line.
Mr. Trump’s apparent endorsement Wednesday of the three videos, which claim to show violent acts carried out by Muslims, isn’t the first time the president has drawn criticism for promoting Islamophobic or otherwise racist views, either on Twitter or in speeches to his supporters. But the backlash he received Wednesday, particularly in Britain, was more severe. Trump has not taken down the retweets, despite several calls for him to do so.
Trump has “further institutionalized Islamophobia in the West by peddling a conspiratorial anti-Muslim tweet from a known right-wing white supremacist British organization,” said Arsalan Iftikhar, an author and senior research fellow for The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University, which aims to bring more awareness to the study of Islamaphobia. “The fact that David Duke — a former Grand Wizard of the KU Klux Klan — praised Trump’s anti-Muslim tweet also further shows the racist depths of Donald Trump’s presidency.”
