Last Night in Sweden’? Trump’s Remark Baffles a Nation
LONDON
— Swedes reacted with confusion, anger and ridicule on Sunday to a
vague remark by President Trump that suggested that something terrible
had occurred in their country.
During a campaign-style rally
on Saturday in Florida, Mr. Trump issued a sharp if discursive attack
on refugee policies in Europe, ticking off a list of places that have
been hit by terrorists.
“You
look at what’s happening,” he told his supporters. “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?”
Not the Swedes.
Nothing particularly nefarious happened in Sweden on Friday — or Saturday, for that matter — and Swedes were left baffled.
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“Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound,” Carl Bildt, a former prime minister and foreign minister, wrote on Twitter.
As the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet
noted, Twitter users were quick to ridicule Mr. Trump’s remark, with
joking references to the Swedish Chef, the “Muppets” character; Swedish
meatballs; and Ikea, the furniture giant.
Mr.
Trump did not state, per se, that a terrorist attack had taken place in
Sweden. But the context of his remarks — he mentioned Sweden right
after he chastised Germany, a destination for refugees and asylum
seekers fleeing war and deprivation — suggested that he thought it might
have.
“Sweden,” Mr. Trump said. “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
He
then invoked the terrorist attacks that took place in Paris in 2015 and
in Brussels and Nice, France, last year, to make an argument for
tightening scrutiny of travelers and asylum seekers. “We’ve allowed
thousands and thousands of people into our country, and there was no way
to vet those people,” he said. “There was no documentation. There was
no nothing. So we’re going to keep our country safe.”
Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, tried to clarify the
president’s remarks Sunday, saying Mr. Trump did not mean to suggest
that a particular attack had happened the night before, but rather was
talking about crime in general in Sweden.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump offered his own clarification,
writing on Twitter, “My statement as to what’s happening in Sweden was
in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning
immigrants & Sweden.”
In that story, the Fox News correspondent Tucker Carlson interviewed Ami Horowitz,
a filmmaker who asserts that migrants in Sweden have been associated
with a crime wave. “They oftentimes try to cover up some of these
crimes,” Mr. Horowitz said, arguing that those who try to tell the truth
about the situation are shouted down as racists and xenophobes.
(Mr. Carlson interjected, “The masochism of the West knows no bounds at all.”)
Mr.
Horowitz said, “Sweden had its first terrorist Islamic attack not that
long ago, so they’re now getting a taste of what we’ve been seeing
across Europe already.”
It was not clear what he was referring to. In 2010, a suicide bomber struck central Stockholm, injuring two people. The bomber,
Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, 28, was an Iraqi-born Swede who had
developed an affinity for Al Qaeda. But that attack occurred long before
the current wave of migrants.
Sweden
has a long history of welcoming refugees — Jews, Iranians, Eritreans,
Somalis, Kurds and people from the former Yugoslavia, among others — but
even some of the most tolerant and idealistic Swedes have raised questions about whether the country can absorb so many newcomers so quickly.
Henrik Selin, a political scientist and deputy director of the Swedish Institute, a state agency dedicated to promoting Sweden globally, said he was puzzled by Mr. Trump’s remarks.
“I
do not have a clue what he was referring to,” he said in a telephone
interview. “Obviously, this could be connected to the fact that there
has been a lot of negative reporting about Sweden, since Sweden has
taken in a lot of refugees.”
The
country processed 81,000 asylum seekers in 2014, 163,000 in 2015 and
29,000 last year, with another 25,000 to 45,000 expected this year,
according to the Swedish Migration Agency.
Mr.
Selin completed a study recently focusing on negative news reports
about Sweden’s acceptance of refugees. It found numerous exaggerations
and distortions, including false reports that Shariah law
was predominant in parts of the country and that some immigrant-heavy
neighborhoods were considered “no-go zones” by the police.
Breitbart
News, the right-wing website once led by Stephen K. Bannon, now Mr.
Trump’s senior strategist, has published numerous stories alleging that
migrants have been responsible for a surge in crime and for a wave of
sexual assaults. Swedish officials have said that their statistics do
not justify such sweeping assertions, and that the country has a high
number of sexual assault reports relative to other European countries because more victims come forward, not because there is more violence.
Mr.
Selin said the news reports “were highly exaggerated and not based in
facts,” adding, “Some of the stories were very popular to spread in
social media by people who have the same kind of agenda — that countries
should not receive so many refugees.”
As
for the cover-up alleged by Mr. Horowitz, Mr. Selin said: “That kind of
claim has been in the political debate for 15 years now. But nobody has
been able to prove there is a cover-up. On the contrary, the fact is
that crime rates are going down.”
He
added: “Swedish authorities have nothing to gain from hiding the truth.
We are quite keen to ensure that the debate and the story about our
country is fact-based and nuanced. We are more than happy to talk about
the challenges our country faces as well as the things that are going
well.”
Asked about Mr. Trump’s comment, Anna Kinberg Batra,
the leader of the opposition Moderate Party, said in a statement,
“President Trump has to answer himself for his statements, why he makes
them and based on what facts.”
Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom declined to comment because, her press secretary, Erik Wirkensjo, said, “it’s hard to say what Trump is talking about.”
In
an essay in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter, the journalist Martin Gelin
speculated that “Trump might have gotten his news from the countless
right-wing media in the United States that have long been reporting that
Sweden is heading for total collapse.”
He
added, “Among Trump supporters, there are common myths that Sweden is
in a state of chaos after taking in refugees from the Middle East.”
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