President Trump falsely claimed Monday during a speech to U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida that the media is intentionally covering up terrorist attacks.
President Donald Trump: “You’ve seen what happened in Paris and Nice. All over Europe, it’s happening. It’s gotten to a point where it’s not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report it.”
The claims appear to be part of a wider push by the White House to increase fear about potential—and even imaginary—terrorist attacks in order to justify President Trump’s crackdown on immigration, including his Muslim ban. Later on Monday, after pressure from media outlets, the White House released a list of what it claims are 78 terrorist attacks since 2014 that it says have not received sufficient coverage. Many of the attacks on the list caused no fatalities, and almost all were carried out outside the United States. The list includes attacks that received such an onslaught of media attention, they are still recognized by only one word, such as “Nice” or “Orlando.” The list also included multiple misspellings, including misspelling the name of San Bernardino. In response, California Congressmember Pete Aguilar tweeted, “You can’t even spell #SanBernardino but you exploit our community to justify your #muslimban.”