Once again, it appears the world has entered the Trump-Fox feedback loop, this time with the president threatening military action against an American ally following a segment he saw on the conservative cable giant.
According to CNN, Trump was heading down to his Florida resort Friday and watching Fox News when he saw an on-air story about how Christians were allegedly being targeted and killed by Islamic groups in Nigeria.
The president reportedly became “immediately” angered by the report and asked his aides for further information on the situation. Once Air Force One landed in Florida, Trump quickly took to his Truth Social platform and fired off posts about Nigeria.
“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a ‘COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN,’” the president blared Friday afternoon, calling on GOP lawmakers to “immediately look into the matter.”
Taking it even further the following day, Trump wrote that he was instructing the Defense Department to “prepare for possible action” in Nigeria while accusing the nation’s government of continuing to allow the murder of Christians.
“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump declared, adding: “If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”
Speaking to reporters on Sunday as he flew back to Washington, D.C., the president said there “could be” American military boots on the ground in Nigeria over his claims of Christian persecution there. “They're killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers, we're not going to allow that to happen,” he added.
“At President Trump’s direction, the Department of War is planning options for possible action to stop the killing of Christians in Nigeria,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told CNN. “Any announcements will come from the President directly.”
Meanwhile, on Monday, the State Department officially designated Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” over its alleged treatment of Christians and violations of religious freedom.
Towards the end of his first administration, Trump had also designated the African nation a country of concern, only for the Biden administration to remove Nigeria from the list in 2021 after judging that it did not meet the criteria of concern regarding “systematic, ongoing and egregious” violations of religious freedom.
Less than an hour before the president began raging about Nigeria on Truth Social, Fox News anchor John Roberts openly wondered if Trump should be playing a bigger role in stopping the supposed persecution of Christians in the region.
“Does this president need to step up and do more?” Roberts asked Ryan Brown, the CEO of Open Doors US, an organization that supports persecuted Christians worldwide. “What could the U.S. do to try to stem the killings?”
During the interview, Brown stated that “more Christians were killed in Nigeria last year than the rest of the world combined” and claimed that “you are six times more likely” to be killed in Nigeria if you are a Christian than if you are a Muslim.
“So while the Nigerian government is seeking to state that this is not religiously-motivated, boy, we are hearing a much different story from those that are being impacted,” he continued.
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According to CNN, Trump’s social media rants resulted in personnel at the U.S. Africa Command being abruptly recalled over the weekend amid the threats of military action. At the same time, the Truth Social posts “left many wondering what the president wanted the military to do,” with sources telling CNN that this was “indicative of a broader frustration with the way potential policy decisions are relayed over social media,” with little to no planning beforehand.
“President Trump was elected in a landslide victory to accomplish his peace through strength agenda. The Department of War stands ready to execute the Commander in Chief’s direction,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell declared in a statement.
The Nigerian government pushed back on Trump’s allegations over the weekend, with Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu saying that “religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so” and that his country “opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.”
Bloomberg reported this week that “the reality is that ethnic violence in Nigeria is driven by access to resources, such as land and water, and terrorism by the likes of Boko Haram and the Islamic state — that largely kills Muslims.” Additionally, the outlet added that “while there is religious violence in Nigeria,” it is primarily centered on criminality and disputes over resources.
“Trump is pushing a strange, inaccurate narrative about Nigeria, which has roughly equal-sized populations of Christians and Muslims,” MSNBC opinion editor Zeeshan Aleem observed. “Armed conflict in the northeast of the country, which is a majority Muslim region, has gone on for more than 15 years and is not targeted systematically at Christians.”
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