WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday retweeted three anti-Muslim videos from a British far-right group, earning a rebuke from major newspapers.

The White House, inundated by media queries, refused to comment on Mr Trump’s decision to retweet messages from a group known for posting fake videos and stories about Muslims.

One of the videos shows a man beating another young man holding crutches and another video shows a group of people kicking a man after he was thrown off a building.

A third video shows a man in shalwar-kameez desecrating a Christian religious icon.

The videos were originally tweeted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of the far right Britain First Party. Ms Fransen was arrested earlier this month over a speech made in Belfast this summer at a Northern Ireland Against Terrorism rally, BBC reported.

Last year, Ms Fransen was found guilty of “religiously aggravated harassment” for verbal abuse of a woman wearing a hijab in front of her four children.

Commenting on Mr Trump’s decision to retweet unauthenticated videos, The Washington Post said that “Mr Trump’s anti-Muslim and anti-media tweets demonstrate deep insecurity”.

The Post reported that the videos were first retweeted by a conservative American columnist Ann Coulter, known for her anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Although Mr Trump has more than 44 million followers, he only follows 45 people and Ms Coulter is one of them.

The retweets pleased the 31-year old British ultra-right leader, who lives in a London suburb.

“Donald Trump himself has retweeted these videos and has around 44 million followers!” said Ms Fransen while responding to Mr Trump’s tweets.

“God Bless You Trump! God Bless America!”

But The New York Times said that it was “unusual to see an American president push out this type of content on such a powerful social media platform”.

The videos, however, were “consistent with how Mr Trump has approached Islam, particularly during the campaign, when he said, “Islam hates us” during the 2016 presidential campaign and called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims coming to the United States, the newspaper added.

Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2017