Trump draws flak for echoing fake story on Pershing’s 20th century exploits in PH
US President Donald Trump was much quicker on Thursday to condemn the violence in Barcelona, where more than a dozen people were killed when a van veered onto a sidewalk and sped down a busy pedestrian zone in what authorities called a terror attack.
He then added to his expression of support a tweet reviving a debunked legend about a U.S. general subduing Muslim rebels a century ago in the Philippines by shooting them with bullets dipped in pig blood, the Associated Press reported.
“Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” Trump wrote.
Hours after Trump’s tweet, newspapers quickly pointed out the US president’s incautiousness.
The independent said: “He appeared to be referring to a widely debunked story that Pershing overcame militant Muslims in the Philippines by killing them and burying their bodies with pigs.”
“Another part of the legend is that he killed them with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood.”
According to The Independent, historians who have studied Pershing’s activities in the Moro province from 1909 to 1913 had discredited these claims.
The Washington Post also has a take on Trump’s outrageous claims.
It said Brian M. Linn, a history professor at Texas A&M University, studied Pershing and published “Guardians of Empire,” a book on the U.S. military presence in Asia from 1902 to 1940.
Linn told the paper that he found “no evidence this occurred.”
“It’s a made-up story. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times people say this isn’t true. No one can say where or when this occurred,” he said.
