President Trump listens to Gov. Ricardo Rosselló of Puerto Rico during a meeting at the White House on Oct. 19. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
President Trump misrepresented a recent report on crime in Britain with a Twitter message Friday blaming “Radical Islamic terror” for an uptick in reported crime, critics in the United Kingdom say.
Trump was referring to data from the U.K. Office for National Statistics released Thursday. The report said British police have recorded 13 percent more crimes in 2017 than in 2016. The British agency said the increase “reflects a range of factors,” including an increase in incidents, more victims reporting crimes and changes in the way crimes are categorized and counted.
The report did cite recent terrorist incidents in Britain but did not explicitly mention Islam.
British Member of Parliament Nicholas Soames retweeted Trump with a message that the U.S. president should “fix gun control” at home.
Another Labour Party lawmaker asked Trump to mind his own business and said Trump does not understand what the statistics show.
Trump has regularly cited “radical Islamic terror” as a principal threat to the United States, and as a candidate he mocked President Barack Obama, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and others for refusing to use that term.
Military leaders, including some now working for Trump, have said the term wrongly impugns Islam and needlessly alienates Muslims whose help the United States seeks in tracking and fighting terrorists.
Karla Adam in London contributed to this story.