The husband of slain British lawmaker Jo Cox said Wednesday that President Donald Trump has "become a purveyor of hate" after retweeting three anti-Muslim videos from a British far-right account.
In an interview on CNN's "AC360" hosted by Anderson Cooper, Brendan Cox compared the posts to "the president retweeting the Ku Klux Klan."
"This is not a mainstream organization and for the president of the United States, our greatest ally as a country, to be retweeting, to be providing a microphone to those voices," he said. "I think no matter what your perception of the U.K., I think has been shocked by that."
The anti-Islam videos were posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right and ultranationalist political group; Cox's wife was killed in June 2016 by a man wielding a dagger and a gun, and shouting "Britain First."
"These narratives have impact," Cox said. "When you retweet and endorse an organization like this, what that does is it changes people's views of what is acceptable. It means that people are more open about their hatred. It means they're more likely to act on their hatred."
Cox also criticized White House press secretary Sarah Sanders' defense of the president's retweets, saying he wants to "promote strong borders and strong national security."
"I'm sure she has the hardest job of anybody in the world," he said. "But I think even in the list of desperate attempts to defend something that was indefensible this was a pretty pathetic attempt at doing so."
"Of course we can disagree about the role of Islam in our society," Cox added. "We can disagree about immigration. We should be able to disagree about all of these things and still say that hatred has no part in our society."
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