Donald Trump peddles 'fake' anti-Muslim tale after Barcelona terror

President Trump responded to news of the terrorist attack in Spain on Thursday by peddling a debunked urban legend about a former Army general’s harsh counterterrorism tactics more than a century ago.

Less than an hour after condemning the attack in Barcelona, Trump encouraged his followers on Twitter to study up on US Army General John J. Pershing and what he did to Muslim terrorists when they were caught.

The Islamic State terror group claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack.

Trump was referencing the discredited story of how Pershing executed 49 Muslims with bullets that had been dipped in pig’s blood during the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902.

According to legend, Pershing told the 50th Muslim to take one of those bullets back to his people as a warning of what would happen should they persist.

This supposedly led to a massive decline in radical terrorism by jihadists for the next several decades.

People who believe this myth say Pershing’s tactic worked because under Islam, pig blood is considered unholy. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly told this story.

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The Washington Post reported that Trump told the story at a rally in North Charleston in February last year.

PolitiFact, the fact-checking website, rated this statement “pants on fire” at the time. PolitiFact tried to verify Trump’s account of Pershing’s actions with eight historians. All were skeptical that these events ever happened.

“There is no evidence that Pershing himself committed these acts, there is nothing said about the use of 50 bullets dipped in pig’s blood, and most important, there is no evidence to support Trump’s claim that this tactic was effective in stopping violence — or that it would provide a useful policy today,” PolitiFact correspondent Louis Jacobson noted.

Earlier in the week, Trump fiercely defended his initial decision not to specifically condemn the white supremacist organizers of the violent rally in Charlottesville by insisting that he “didn’t know all of the facts”.

Trump has been apparently less concerned with the details when it comes to Pershing’s record, including Thursday shortly after the Barcelona attack.

Trump’s tweet sparked immediate backlash.