The Swedish cops in the Fox News story cited by Trump said it was filmed by a "madman"

Impact

On Monday, President Donald Trump stuck to his claim that Sweden is riddled by crimes committed by immigrants, blaming the "FAKE NEWS media" for saying immigration in the Scandinavian country "is working out just beautifully."

Trump defended his suggestion that there was a terror attack Saturday night in Sweden" by citing a Fox News report on crimes by immigrants in the Scandinavian country.

It turns out that Fox News segment may have been closer to "fake news" than anything from the U.S. media criticizing Trump's claims. 

The Fox News segment, in which anchor Tucker Carlson discussed the supposed rise in Swedish crime following an influx of refugees with filmmaker Ami Horowitz, featured a clip of an interview Horowitz conducted with two Swedish police officers.

In the interview, the officers appear to corroborate Horowitz's — and now Trump's — claim about the increase in crime from refugees.

"I think we were caught off guard," one of the police officers said in the clip. "We didn't expect [there] to be so much increase."

Those officers, however, are now saying that clip doesn't represent their real views. In an interview with Swedish news source Dagens Nyheter, police officers Anders Göranzon and Jacob Ekström explained they do not stand behind what Horowitz said and described the filmmaker as a "madman."

The real interview, Göranzon said, was about something totally different than what the Fox News report was about. The officers were asked about "crime in high-risk areas," with no mention made about immigration.

"We don't stand behind it. It shocked us. He has edited the answers," Göranzon said. "We were answering completely different questions in the interview. This is bad journalism."