Although Fake News has sadly become part of the mainstream American discourse thanks to tRump, we all know that Fox News has been perfecting Fake News for quite some time. This past week was no exception.
After President tRump babbled incoherently about a nonexistent immigration-related tragedy in Sweden, based solely on a bogus story aired by Faux News moron Tucker Carlson, Faux News asshat Bill O’Reilly decided to get in the Fake News story about Swedish immigration. As reported by The Washington Post, O’Reilly covered allegations that Sweden had become a more dangerous place in because of immigration in his own special way as he interviewed two Swedish nationals:
One guest, Swedish journalist Anne-Sofie Naslund of the Expressen newspaper, pushed back against O'Reilly's comments, suggesting that her country was far safer than it was being presented.
However, the next guest disagreed.
Nils Bildt, billed as a “Swedish defense and national security advisor” by Fox News, told O'Reilly that Naslund was “rather incorrect” and that there had been big problems with integrating immigrants into Swedish society. “These things are not being openly and honestly discussed,” Bildt said.
There’s just one little problem: nobody in Sweden has ever heard Nils Bildt, including anyone in the Swedish security community. The Dagens Nyheter newspaper reported yesterday that neither the Swedish armed forces nor the Foreign Ministry had ever heard of Nils Bildt, who the newspaper referred to as an “unknown Bildt” in its headline (to distinguish him from well-known Swedish politician Carl Bildt).
According to Robert Egnell, a professor at Swedish Defence University:
“He is in not in any way a known quantity in Sweden and has never been part of the Swedish debate,” Egnell said in an email “He has not lived in Sweden for a very long time and no one within the Swedish security community (which is not a very big pond) seems to know him.”
It turns out the Bildt hasn’t lived in Sweden since 1994, operates a DC-based consulting service that specializes in ransom and kidnap negotiations, particularly in Japan, and, according to Dagens Nyheter, spent a year in jail in 2014 for violent offense (this is the only part of the newspaper’s report that Bildt disputes, per WaPo).
As you can expect, the bogus O’Reilly segment has been an embarrassment for Faux News in Sweden, leading to a stream of mocking by Swedes on Twitter (you can view a sampling in the WaPo story). It’s also contributing to a growing embarrassment for U.S. media in general across the globe.
Speaking to Dagens Nyheter, security expert Wiktorin had suggested Bildt's interview was a “disturbing trend” in U.S. media where Sweden is presented as a “problem country.”
Welcome to tRump’s America. A bogus President makes a Big Fat Lie, media repeats the Big Fat Lie and finds some loser willing to be billed incorrectly as an “expert” on the issue to repeat the Big Fat Lie on air, gullible Americans believe the Big Fat Lie. Rinse. Repeat.
UPDATE:
About that arrest that Bildt disputes, the Independent did some digging to debunk his denials:
But it has emerged that Mr Bildt, himself an immigrant in the US, was arrested in June 2014 for assault and battery against a law enforcement officer, obstruction of justice and public inebriation after threatening an official.
He was charged under the name Tolling, which he later changed to Bildt.
And oh yes, I hope you caught that: Bildt/Tolling is himself an immigrant.
(H/T Catte Nappe)