White House defends Trump's anti-Muslim retweets; says US President concerned about 'national security'

Just a few hours after United States President Donald Trump retweeted a series of anti-Muslim videos from a British far-right account on Wednesday morning, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended his actions and even said he circulated them to start a conversation about border security and immigration.

Also read: Trump breaks Eid dinner tradition but celebrates Diwali in White House

Trump had from his account shared three videos involving Muslim men. He captioned the three videos as "Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!", "Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!" and "Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!".

Several people soon condemned Trump for sharing the videos.

Even America's closest ally, the office of British Prime Minister Theresa May, said: "It is wrong for the [US] President to have done this."

White House defends Trump

However, Sanders downplayed the Trump's re-tweets by emphasising the President's commitment to national security and the safety of Americans.

Sanders told reporters she doesn't know how the videos got in front of Trump but at the same time didn't answer whether they were real.

"The threat is real and that's what the President is talking about," said Sanders.

However, several reports have claimed that the videos are fake.

Though Sanders did not clarify the exact nture of the "threat" that Trump wished to address by sharing the videos, she cited the safety of Americans as the reason behind the retweeting of the anti-Muslim videos.

"The President is talking about the need for national security. The need for military spending, those are very real things, there's nothing fake about that," she said.

She even told the reporters that by focusing on "the nature of the video, you're focusing on the wrong thing."

Trump, on the other hand, tweeted out to May on Wednesday night asking her not to focus on him.

Sanders reacts to May's criticism

Sanders, meanwhile, was of the opinion that the British prime minister should seriously consider the "threat" conveyed through the videos.

"I think that both Theresa May and a lot of the other world leaders across the world know that these are real threats that we have to talk about, I think Europe has seen that a lot first hand," Sanders was quoted by CNN as saying.