What is he smoking, ask Swedes after Trump’s false terror claims

SwEDES have poured scorn on Donald Trump’s ‘fake news’ claim that suggested a major terrorist incident had happened in their country.

At a rally in Florida on Saturday, the President said ‘look what’s happening last night in Sweden’ as he alluded to past terror attacks in Europe.

It was not clear what he was referring to and there were no high-profile incidents reported in Sweden on Friday night.

The comment prompted a barrage of social media mockery yesterday and a national newspaper published a list of mundane events that happened on Friday with no apparent connections to terrorism.

Foreign ministry spokesman Catarina Axelsson said the government was not aware of any ‘terror-linked major incidents’ and Sweden’s security police said it had no reason to change the threat level. ‘Nothing has occurred which would cause us to raise that level,’ said spokesman Karl Melin.

Former Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter: ‘Sweden? Terror attack? what has he been smoking? Questions abound.’

The Aftonbladet tabloid addressed Mr Trump in an article yesterday, saying: ‘This happened in Sweden on Friday night, Mr President…’ It then listed in English events including a man being treated for severe burns, an avalanche warning and police chasing a drunk driver.

One Twitter user said that after the ‘terri- ble events’ of Friday night, ‘Ikea have sold out of this’ and posted a mock instruction manual on how to build a DIY ‘border wall’ for which pieces were no longer available.

Sweden, which has long had a reputation for welcoming refugees and migrants, had a record 163,000 asylum applications in 2015 and has since cut back on the number it accepts. Its most recent attack was in the capital, Stockholm, in December 2010, when an Iraqi-born Swede detonated two devices, including one that killed him but no one else.

At the rally in Florida, Mr Trump told his followers to take note of what was happening in Germany, and also mentioned Paris, Brussels and Nice, in apparent reference to terror attacks there.

He did not give details of the supposed incident in Sweden, simply saying ‘Sweden, who would believe this, Sweden’.