It must be nice to be the kind of person whose biggest concerns about Donald Trump involve his etiquette on Twitter. Specifically his etiquette this morning, when the president retweeted three videos from Jayda Fransen, leader of the far-right Britain First Party. One is captioned, “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!” Another reads, “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!” A third video shows what Fransen claims is a Muslim boy beating up a Dutch boy on crutches.
On Twitter, mixed in with cries from people genuinely concerned to see the leader of the free world retweeting such inflammatory and unverified content were the cries of people calling out Trump for how bad the tweets make him look. Among them was Paul Joseph Watson, whose Twitter bio describes him as “Infowars editor-at-large.” Yes. That’s the problem here. The “optics.”
Piers Morgan, a man with a storied history of having bad opinions online, was likewise concerned.
As it turns out, the third video Trump tweeted does show a Dutch boy on crutches getting beaten up. It’s just that he’s, according to Dutch news outlets, not getting beaten up by a Muslim kid, but rather another Dutch boy, who happens to have dark hair and no crutches.
