“We’ve got to keep our country safe,” President Donald Trump said last week at a rally in Melbourne, Florida. Hardly objectionable.
It was what he said next that baffled . . . some.
“You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden — Sweden, who would believe this?”
Many news outlets ran with the official Swedish response: puzzlement. What happened the night before in Sweden? Was he suggesting a terror attack? There was no terror attack. Ah, President Trump: lying again!
Social media erupted with the usual anti-Trump mockery.
Swedes were understandably confused. As Tucker Carlson noted, “The president ought to be precise in what he says.” But Carlson added that the “analysis” of numerous network news programs was “so stupid that it’s hard to believe it made it on television.”
One key job of professional journalists is interpretation.
When Trump uttered “last night,” he wasn’t referring to what happened, he was referring to what he saw the night before on Tucker Carlson’s show: an interview with Ami Horowitz, who recently produced an exposé on the violence in Sweden’s “no-go zones,” enclaves of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.
Where even Sweden’s police fear to tread.
“Sweden — they took in large numbers,” Trump went on. “They’re having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what’s happening in Brussels. You look at what’s happening all over the world.”*
The mass refugee surge into Europe is a huge problem.
But the American press assuming the worst regarding President Trump and reporting it?
It’s a problem, too.
Could reasonable interpretation itself be morphing into a “no-go zone”?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Trump went on to say, “Take a look at Nice. Take a look at Paris.” He is referring to terrorist attacks in those cities. He may also be referring to “no-go” communities where police and non-Muslims appear to be unwelcome, as reported in Germany, Britain, France and Belgium.
