
The White House finally confirms what the rest of us have known all along: Trump has no idea what he's doing.

Donald Trump's Twitter feed is a toxic stream of lies, misspelled and misused words, childish attacks, jaw-dropping narcissism, and promotions for Fox News.

In the last 24 hours, it's also been a platform to promote anti-Muslim videos by a far-right extremist — a move that is receiving widespread criticism, at home and abroad, and particularly from the British parliament and even the country's prime minister herself.

But according to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump is not to blame for that because he had no idea what he was doing when hit the retweet button.


ROBERTS: Did the president, when he retweeted Jayda Fransen, who know she was? SANDERS: No, I don't believe so. But again, I think he knew what the issues are, and that is that we have a real threat of extreme violence and terrorism, not just in this country but across the globe, particularly in Europe, and that was the point he was making.

Jayda Fransen is the far-right extremist whose videos Trump retweeted on Wednesday. And while he clearly did not feel the need to know whose voice he was amplifying, that doesn't make his actions any less reckless or dangerous. Fransen is the deputy leader of Britain First, a fascist group that openly advocates for banning Muslims and even for allowing police to shoot them in cold blood.

Fransen was convicted of "religiously aggravated harassment," for verbally assaulting a woman wearing a hijab in front of her children. And her party sends so-called "Christian patrols" into Muslim neighborhoods to terrorize residents.

Trump apparently didn't know any of this when he chose to spread Fransen's toxic videos across the globe, but members of the British parliament certainly did when they loudly condemned him for it.

According to the White House, though, it doesn't matter that Trump had no idea what he was doing. He wanted to emphasize one of his favorite points about Muslim terrorism — even though one of the videos he promoted is, as he would call it, fake news. Labeled "Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches," the person in the video is neither Muslim nor a migrant.

Trump's incessant tweeting is usually bizarre, offensive, incoherent, and just plain wrong. However, because he is no longer just a reality TV show host, but instead the president of the United States, it's also incredibly dangerous and has severe and wide-reaching consequences.

That's why, when he takes to Twitter, he ought to have some idea of what he's talking about before he furiously types and causes international chaos.