A British lawmaker compared Britain First, the group led by the woman who posted the anti-Muslim videos President Trump retweeted Wednesday, to the Ku Klux Klan.
During an interview on CNN, Labour MP Stephen Doughty said Trump should worry about what’s happening in the United States more than he’s worrying about “far-right organizations in the U.K.”
“I utterly condemn hatred and extremism and violence from wherever it comes,” he said on CNN.
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“What the president has done here is sharing information from a convicted criminal — someone who is currently facing further charges — and from a very extreme organization equivalent I would say to the likes of the KKK in the United States.”
He said it was “extraordinary” for Trump to be doing that.
Trump — who talked during his campaign about barring Muslims from entering the country — spurred widespread backlash Wednesday when he retweeted three videos from the deputy leader of Britain First, an ultranationalist group. The videos purported to show violent acts by Muslims.
British Prime Minister Theresa May condemned the action and London Mayor Sadiq Khan said Trump should not be welcomed in the U.K. after retweeting the series of videos.
The leader of the U.K.’s left-wing Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, called the retweets “abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society.”
The White House on Wednesday defended Trump’s retweets.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said whether the inflammatory videos are real or not, “the threat is real.”
“I’m not talking about the nature of the video,” she told reporters at the White House. “I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing. The threat is real and that is what the president is talking about.