Trump Threat to Send Troops ‘Guns-a-Blazing’ Into Nigeria Triggered by Fox News Segment: CNN
(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump’s threat that the U.S. could storm into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” to defend persecuted Christians was reportedly triggered after he watched a Fox News segment on the crisis.
Trump’s Truth Social post on Friday about the situation was sparked by a story on Fox News about Christians being targeted by Islamist groups, two sources told CNN late Monday.
The president was “immediately” angered, and within an hour of landing in Florida, he had posted: “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter.”
The final report on Fox News before Trump’s post appeared to come during an America Reports segment when host John Roberts invited guest Ryan Brown, the CEO of Open Doors U.S., an organization supporting persecuted Christians, to discuss the situation.
A White House official insisted Trump had “been tracking this issue previously and had already begun thinking about Truthing it out.” But inside the Pentagon, Trump’s sudden directive to “prepare for possible action” came as a shock.
Personnel at AFRICOM were recalled to headquarters over the weekend, CNN reports, and even senior defense officials struggled to decipher what precisely the president wanted.
“At President Trump’s direction, the Department of War is planning options for possible action to stop the killing of Christians in Nigeria,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said.
Nigeria’s administration responded to the social media post by framing the issue as more complex.
“We are shocked that President Trump is mulling an invasion of our country,” Bayo Onanuga, spokesman for Nigeria’s president, told CNN.
The situation on the ground, reportedly, is not cleanly sectarian. Experts say violence in Nigeria is driven by a knot of religious, ethnic and land conflicts, while the attacks shown on the news were conducted by radical Islamist groups against Christian and Muslim communities.
