When all of them thin k alike, US President Trump thinks in a different manner. Before London police or anyone else had announced that the attack was linked to terrorism — the president of the United States retweeted an un-sourced blurb from Drudge.com: “Fears of new terror attack after van ‘mows down 20 people’ on London Bridge.”
London authorities at that point had confirmed only a few details. Shortly after the Drudge tweet, British police again warned against spreading unconfirmed information:
“Keep following this Twitter feed. We will release facts when we can – our info must be accurate”
Fifteen minutes later, Trump issued his second tweet since the attack — promoting his administration’s legally embattled “travel ban,” which hinders people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States:
“We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
As Philip Bump noted for The Washington Post, Trump tends to rush to weigh in on attacks connected to Islamist terrorism but is “remarkably late” in responding to others that are not.
But at that point in the evening (and even by Sunday morning), London authorities had not released any information on the identities, ethnicities or nationalities of the suspects in the attack.
Trump’s final tweet of Saturday night was more in line with early statements from other world leaders — a show of unity and support:
“Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there – WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!”
One minute after he sent it, British authorities declared the attack to be a terrorist incident.
Overnight, as Americans slept, leaders in Britain and around the world issued statements of condemnation.
On London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Twitter account, which had deferred to police in the early minutes of the attack, the mayor urged “all Londoners to remain calm and vigilant today and in the days ahead” and vowed that terrorists would not cow his city.
On the BBC, Khan also told Londoners to expect a heavy police presence in the days ahead. “No need to be alarmed,” he said. “One of the things the police, all of us, need to do is make sure we’re as safe as we possibly can be.”
But nearly all of Trump’s London tweets drew outrage from someone.
“Political point scoring is the absolute, LAST thing we need right now,” a British barrister wrote Saturday, for example — after Trump promoted his executive orders banning visitors from Muslim-majority countries. Even the European Union’s top security official called out the president:
“There’s every reason to stand together in defence of our values — you don’t do that by spreading alarm,” Julian King tweeted.
