Ignorance no defence, not even for Trump

One of the unwritten but obvious rules of social media use is to think before making any online statement. Unless one believes his every action is a calculated political manoeuvre, it would seem Donald Trump has failed to learn such norms.

Sharing inflammatory tweets by any political group without checking their veracity is inadvisable.

To do so when they have been created by a controversial right-wing pressure group with a hardline anti-immigration agenda like Britain First is reckless.

Whether, indeed, President Trump knew nothing of the group when he proliferated its content to his 47 million Twitter followers does not matter – ignorance is no defence.

Even now, having created a diplomatic incident and threatened relations between his country and this, he stops short of saying sorry, instead merely offering to do so if the videos were created by “horrible racist people”.

It is impossible to know from past utterances what he defines as such so, perhaps, we should not hold our collective breath for his apology.

The President has hinted he may make a trip north of the border during a working visit to the UK, which is in the final stages of being arranged.

He praises the country for its “very special people”. Scotland has taken a dim view of far-right fringe groups and may make its displeasure known if he does visit.