Deep breath.
The President of the United States has quote-tweeted a Katie Hopkins tweet in which both attack Sadiq Khan while wholly misunderstanding what the Mayor of London actually does.
Let us walk you through it.
Last night the Met Police Twitter account was hacked resulting in a number of tweets calling for the release of drill rap artist Digga D.
Never one to miss an opportunity to critique Khan, who just so happens to be Muslim, Hopkins appears to have decided that among the responsibilities of being mayor is the role of social media manager.
The controversial former columnist tried to equate the hack with the shocking incidents of violent crime in the capital in recent months.
A few hours later, a presumably sleepy president was logging onto Twitter and couldn’t resist joining in.
The result? A perfect example of why Twitter can sometimes be the worst place known to humanity as 16,000 (and counting) people tacitly endorsed the president’s tweet with a like or a retweet.
But on the flip side, there were also replies such as this:
This is the second time this month that Trump has retweeted Hopkins – just weeks ago he promoted a tweet in which she praised a number of far-right politicians and said “the fightback by proud nations is on”.
Hopkins listed the names of four European politicians, all of whom have a track record of populist and discriminatory views.
Hopkins also said that “god-willing/jihadi-failing” she will be alive to see “Boris Johnson in Number 10” and “Trump in the White House” and “Netanyahu building Israel”.
The four right-wing politicians named in Hopkins’ tweet are:
- Jair Bolsonaro, the populist leader of Brazil and vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, immigration and abortion. In 2013 he claimed “90% of the kids adopted by LGBT couples” would be used as sex slaves.
- Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister of Italy who has called for the expulsion of Roma people from the country.
- Viktor Orban, the authoritarian Prime Minister of Hungary who has curbed civil liberties in his country, restricted freedom of speech and suggested white europeans are being replaced with migrants from Africa and the Middle East.
- Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a Polish politician who has described the LGBTQ+ movement as a foreign force that threatens the nation.