On Fox and Friends yesterday morning, Donald Trump claimed that he predicted the terror attacks in Brussels. Check the 6:30 mark on the above video. “It was ridiculous. I know more about Brussels than Brussels do.” Trump continues, in somewhat less garbled English: “I was the one that predicted this was going to happen in Brussels, and was criticized by the New York Times for it. Now everyone is saying I was right all over Twitter.”

Did Trump predict the Brussels attacks on March 22? The answer seems to be “not really.” He is referring to a New York Times article from January 27, 2016 criticizing him for insulting Brussels and calling it a “hellhole.” That article is referring to an earlier interview on the Fox Business Network:

In that interview he makes a lot of vague claims about infiltration of radical Islam into Brussels and Paris. “There is something going on, Maria [Bartiromo, the Fox interviewer]. Go to Brussels. Go to Paris. Go to different places. There is something going on and it’s not good, where they want Shariah law, where they want this, where they want things that — you know, there has to be some assimilation. There is no assimilation.” Trump continues in a vague sort of way: “There is something bad going on…You go to Brussels — I was in Brussels a long time ago, 20 years ago, so beautiful, everything is so beautiful — it’s like living in a hellhole right now.”

He says nothing about a future attack in those statements, or any specifics, he only uses this platform to blast Muslims that want to live as Muslims, that don’t care to “assimilate.” He was correct that Brussels was ripe for an attack, as the unpreparedness of Belgium in the wake of a terrorist attack has come to light. But to say that he predicted the attacks is a falsehood. More braggadocio from Trump because he accidentally linked a city that he was insulting to radical Islam.

Sources:
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwGJ358HBro
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6XtEJtl2cg
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/world/europe/trump-finds-new-city-to-insult-brussels
http://yournewswire.com/did-donald-trump-predict-the-brussels-terror-attack/