Islam Times - Trumps draws fire over retweeting quote by ex-Fascist leader

Islam Times - US Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump defends his decision to share a controversial quotation of the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini on social media.

On Sunday, Trump drew criticism for putting Mussolini’s quote on his Twitter account, which read, “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”

Trump said afterwards that he would not care who the quotation originally belonged to.

He said he only wanted “to be associated with interesting quotes.”

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Trump said, “Mussolini was Mussolini. It’s a very good quote, it’s a very interesting quote, and I know it. I saw it. And I know who said it. But what difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini or somebody else? It’s certainly a very interesting quote. That’s probably why I have between Facebook and Twitter 14 million people when other people don’t.”

He also admired some of the ideas of the former Italian dictator.

A gossip-tabloid website has admitted setting up the whole thing to deceive Trump into forwarding interesting sayings as they found him easy to fool.

The Republican front-runner has been using social media to insult his enemies and opponents, as well as grabbing public attention by making controversial remarks.

Trump has also come under fire for not denouncing an implicit endorsement from a white supremacist leader. Former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and other supremacists David Duke had described not voting for Trump as “treason to your heritage.”

The business mogul has time and time again come under attack for incendiary rhetoric against Muslims, immigrants and other minorities in the US.