Why is Trump tweeting about a WWI general?

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is being criticized once again for lauding the alleged tactics of Gen. John Pershing in dealing with Islamic extremists in the Philippines at the turn of the last century.

Trump tweeted on Thursday that people should “study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!”

What is behind the tweet and the criticism? The Associated Press explains: story that Pershing had halted Muslim attacks in the Philippines by shooting rebels with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood. Pork is taboo for Muslims, but that story has been widely debunked by historians as unsubstantiated or exaggerated. Fact-checking organizations such as Politifact rated Trump's claim as false.

However, according to Politifact, Pershing wrote in a memoir that another U.S. commander in the Philippines had at least once “seen to it” that Muslim insurgents' bodies were buried in the same grave as a dead pig to serve as a warning to others. “It was not pleasant to have to take such measures, but the prospect of going to hell instead of heaven sometimes deterred the would-be assassins,” Pershing wrote. According to Politifact, a footnote to the 2013 edition of the memoir cited another general as telling Pershing in a letter that the practice had long been a custom “to discourage crazy lunatics.”