David M Jackson

USA TODAY

President Trump — ridiculed over the weekend for apparently denouncing a terrorist attack in Sweden that had never happened — said Sunday he was referring to a Fox News report on violence in Sweden allegedly perpetrated by refugees.

"My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden," the president tweeted late Sunday.

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Trump responded after criticism over a Saturday speech in which he listed Sweden along with Germany and Belgium during a discussion of terrorism. “We’ve got to keep our country safe," he said. "You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?”

"Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound," tweeted former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, a frequent social-media antagonist of the U.S. president.

Sweden baffled by supposed terror attack

In claiming a link between refugees, terrorism and violence, Trump told a political rally in Melbourne, Fla., on Saturday: "You look at what's happening in Germany. You look at what's happening last night in Sweden ... Sweden ... who would believe this? Sweden, they took in large numbers, they are having problems like they never thought possible. You look at what's happening Brussels, you look at what's happening all over the world."

The Swedish embassy in Washington, D.C., asked the State Department for an explanation of Trump's comments, Reuters reported.

While there have been terrorist attacks in Germany and Brussels, Belgium, Trump's comments about Sweden were inspired by a Fox News segment on random violence in that country allegedly committed by refugees.

The president was "referring to a report he had seen the previous night," White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said, and "he was talking about rising crime and recent incidents in general, and not referring to a specific incident."

Trump's remarks were mocked in Sweden and the United States.

In Sweden, the Aftonbladet tabloid told Trump in an article Sunday that events in its country on Friday included a man being treated for severe burns, an avalanche warning and police chasing a drunken driver.

Sweden Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Catarina Axelsson said that the government wasn’t aware of any “terror-linked major incidents.” Sweden’s Security Police said it had no reason to change the terror threat level.

“Nothing has occurred which would cause us to raise that level,” agency spokesman Karl Melin said.

Trump's critics included Chelsea Clinton. In a tweet, the daughter of 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton cited an adviser's recent mistaken claim of a terrorist "massacre" in Bowling Green, Ky.

"What happened in Sweden Friday night?" Clinton tweeted. "Did they catch the Bowling Green Massacre perpetrators?"

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