Trump's fake terror: President confuses Swedish crime report with terror incident

US President Donald Trump has said his reference to a terror incident in Sweden on the weekend came from a Fox News story he watched linking surging violent crime rates to increased immigration in that country.

So not a terror incident at all, but a news investigation into a surge in Swedish violent crimes.

Trump, who in his first weeks in office has tried to tighten US borders sharply for national security reasons, told thousands of supporters at a rally on Sunday that Sweden was having serious problems with immigrants and inferred there had been a fresh incident.

"You look at what's happening last night in Sweden," Trump said at the rally. "Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They're having problems like they never thought possible."

No incident occurred in Sweden and the country's baffled government asked the US State Department to explain what Trump meant.

"My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden," Trump said in a tweet on Monday.

Fox News, a US cable news channel that has sometimes been cited favourably by Trump, ran a report on Friday night about alleged migrant-related crime problems in the country.

A White House spokeswoman told reporters on Monday that Trump had been referring generally to rising crime and not a specific incident in the Scandinavian country.

Sweden's crime rate has fallen since 2005, official statistics show, even as the country has taken in hundreds of thousands of immigrants from war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq.

Trump's comment confounded Sweden's government. "We are trying to get clarity," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Catarina Axelsson said.

The US State Department said it did not comment on diplomatic communications.

Trump has been widely criticised for making assertions with little supporting evidence.

In recent months, he has argued that more than three million people voted fraudulently in the US election, an assertion that election officials say is false, and incorrectly stated that he won the election by the most decisive margin in decades.

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom appeared to respond to Trump's statement about her country on Saturday by posting on Twitter an excerpt of a recent speech in which she said democracy and diplomacy "require us to respect science, facts and the media."

Her predecessor was less circumspect.

"Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound," former Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter.

Other Swedes mocked Trump's remark on Twitter using the hashtag #LastNightInSweden, posting pictures of reindeer, Swedish meatballs and people assembling the country's famous IKEA furniture.

"#lastnightinsweden my son dropped his hotdog in the campfire. So sad!" Twitter user Adam Bergsveen wrote.

Today's top news stories - February 20