During an interview with Piers Morgan, President Trump refused to apologize for retweeting three fake, inflammatory, and Islamophobic videos originally posted by the far-right British group Britain First.
Asked if he regrets the retweets, Trump didn’t directly answer, but instead said, “You know, look, it was done because I am a big believer in fighting radical Islamic terror. This was a depiction of radical radical Islamic terror.”
Morgan cut in to note that the videos were misleading. Though they purportedly showed Muslims committing acts of violence, each of the videos contained false or misleading information.
But Trump said that he doesn’t think it really matters whether the videos were accurate or not. And anyway, retweets don’t equal endorsements.
“I didn’t do it,” Trump said. “I did a retweet.”
Trump’s line echoes the talking point Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders used to defend Trump’s retweets in November, when she told reporters that it doesn’t matter if the videos Trump shared are misleading, because the threat posed by Muslims is “real.”
On Friday, Morgan went on Morning Joe to talk about his interview with Trump, and said he “can’t believe” it took Trump several weeks to un-retweet the Islamaphobic videos.
“I can’t believe in that period of time that nobody had told him exactly who these people were,” Morgan said.
As ThinkProgress previously detailed, Britain First is a xenophobic far-right party known for filming Islamophobic stunts. The group gained notoriety in 2016 when the assassin who gunned down MP Jo Cox repeatedly yelled “Britain First” after murdering her.
A number of leading British politicians denounced Trump’s retweets, but Trump told Morgan he didn’t know anything about Britain First.
“It was a big story where you are but it was not a big story where I am,” Trump said, downplaying the significance of the retweets. “I know nothing about them… I know nothing about these people.”
Trump’s comments about Britain First are reminiscent of what he said after David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed him in February 2016.
“I know nothing about David Duke,” Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper at the time. “I know nothing about white supremacists.”