Trump: Media ‘working overtime to blame me’ for New Zealand attack

President Trump on Monday accused the news media of blaming him for last week’s deadly shootings at a pair of mosques in New Zealand.

“The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!”

{mosads}Some U.S. media coverage has focused on the suspected gunman’s manifesto, which called Trump a “symbol of renewed white identity,” and some pundits have argued he has stoked white nationalist fervor worldwide.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) made that argument during a Monday morning appearance on CNN.

“I think sometimes you simply have to yield to the objective evidence, and that is, it points to him being sympathetic to that point of view,” said Ellison, who previously was the first Muslim elected to Congress.

Ellison was reacting to Trump’s comments from Friday, when the president said he does not believe white nationalism is on the rise despite the shootings that left 49 people dead.

“I don’t really, I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems,” Trump told reporters.

Trump has also come under fire for his August 2017 statement that there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., where a man attending the rally killed a counterprotester.

White House officials have repeatedly denied that Trump harbors white nationalist views.

“The president is not a white supremacist. I’m not sure how many times we have to say that,” acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said on “Fox News Sunday.”