Piers Morgan Confronts Trump Over Anti-Muslim Video Retweets: ‘Retweets Are Very Difficult’
Piers Morgan interviewed President Donald Trump from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — and confronted him over his retweeting of three fairly horrifying — and unsubstantiated — videos from anti-Muslim group Britain First.
In the interview, which aired on Good Morning Britain, Morgan grilled the president over his apparent endorsement of the anti-Muslim sentiment expressed by the far right extremist group.
“You retweeted an organization called Britain First — one of the leaders — three times. This caused huge anxiety and anger in my country, because Britain first is a bunch of racist, fascists,” Morgan said.
Trump feigned ignorance: “Of course I didn’t know that. I know nothing about them and I know nothing about them today other than I read a little bit.”
He then explained Twitter to prolific internet user Morgan:
“I did a retweet. You know retweets. Retweets are very difficult. When you do your own tweeting, when you do your own social media it’s fine, when you do those retweets it can cause problems, cause you never know who’s doing it to start off with.”
Morgan pointed out that — despite the immense uproar caused by Trump’s retweeting of the anti-Muslim videos — “you didn’t take down the retweets for several weeks.”
“The way it was interpreted was that you were effectively endorsing this bunch of racists, and that caused a lot of anger,” Morgan said.
“I don’t know who they are. I know nothing about them so I wouldn’t be doing that,” Trump replied. “I say often, I am the least racist person that anybody is going to meet. Certainly I wasn’t endorsing anybody, I knew nothing about them.”
Trump continued to explain that he retweeted the videos because he was concerned about “radical Islamic terrorism.”
When Morgan pressed for an apology, or for Trump to express regret, the U.S. president replied: “It was done because I am a big believer in fighting radical Islamic terror. This was a depiction of radical Islamic terror.”
“But they were unverified videos,” Morgan shot back.
“They are, but I didn’t do it, I didn’t go out — I did a retweet.”
“Can I get an apology out of you?” Morgan asked.
“If you are telling me they’re horrible people, horrible, racist people, I would certainly apologize if you’d like me to do that,” Trump said. “I know nothing about these people.”
Trump sparked outrage in Britain after he posted the three tweets last November, depicting various acts of supposed “Muslim violence” — prompting condemnation even from the typically milquetoast U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May.
[image via screengrab]
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