President appeared to refer to a non-existent terror attack in the country during a rally on Saturday in Florida, prompting questions from Swedish officials

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The White House has said Donald Trump was speaking about general “rising crime” when he seemed to describe a non-existent terror attack in Sweden on Saturday night, as the president defended his ideas about banning refugees and travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Sweden is often misunderstood. But Trump’s views subvert the truth | Andrew Brown Read more

“You look at what’s happening in Germany. You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden,” the president said at a rally in Melbourne, Florida, on Saturday night. “Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

Swedes reacted with surprise and confusion to the president’s claim about an unspecified incident that he said took place on Friday night. On Sunday, the Swedish embassy in Washington asked the US state department for an explanation.

“We have asked the question today to the state department. We are trying to get clarity,” said the Swedish foreign ministry spokeswoman Catarina Axelsson.

On Sunday afternoon, the president tweeted his own clarification: “My statement as to what’s happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden.”

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden.

Sarah Sanders, the principal deputy press secretary for the White House, told reporters a few minutes before his tweet that Trump had been “referring to a report he had seen the previous night”.

“He was talking about rising crime and recent incidents in general, and not referring to a specific incident,” Sanders said.

On Friday night, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson presented a segment with the film-maker Ami Horowitz, who claims that the migrants Sweden has accepted are linked to crime.

“Sweden had its first terrorist Islamic attack not that long ago, so they’re now getting a taste of what we’ve been seeing across Europe already,” Horowitz claimed, without specifying what attack he was alluding to. “They oftentimes try to cover up some of these crimes.”

Sweden suffered a suicide bombing by an Iraqi-born Swedish citizen in Stockholm in 2010, a year before civil wars began in Syria and Libya and unrest across the Middle East pushed millions of people to flee their homes, many into Europe. Crime rates in Sweden have changed little over the last 10 years, according to the 2016 Swedish Crime Survey.

Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, tweeted a link observing that “post-truth” was named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries in 2016.

She also tweeted an excerpt of a speech she gave in parliament last week. “Both functioning democracy and constructive cooperation between states require us to speak with, and not about, each other, to honour agreements and to allow ideas to compete,” Wallstrom said. “They also require us to respect science, facts and the media, and to acknowledge each other’s wisdom.”

Earlier this month, a senior White House aide, Kellyanne Conway, was criticized for citing a “Bowling Green massacre” that had not occurred.

Carl Bildt, the country’s former prime minister, more succinctly tweeted a link asking “Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound.“

Contacted by email by the Guardian on Sunday, Horowitz said he was “gratified” that Trump brought attention to “the increasing problems that Sweden is having with its open door immigration policy to the Muslim world”.

“For better or worse,” Horowitz said that Trump sometimes speaks “in shorthand hyperbole”. He said his original allusion was to the 2010 Stockholm attack as well as an October arson attack in Malmö, which was claimed by Isis but that a Swedish court concluded was not a terror attack. No one was injured.

Horowitz also claimed crime “is increasingly significantly in Sweden”, contradicting the survey, and citing rape as an example. Sweden has a broad definition of rape, compared to many western nations; according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, there were 13% more reported rapes in 2016 than 2015, but the total was still lower than in 2014.

Horowitz said that “the Swedish response” suggests “they are incapable or unwilling to see the reality of what is happening in their own country.”