President Donald Trump's message Friday to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan was "inappropriate" because of his references to terrorism, Rep. Ted Lieu said Friday.
"The message was inappropriate," the California Democrat told Wolf Blitzer on CNN. "When you devote an entire paragraph to terrorist attacks, you are imputing to the 99.9 percent of Muslims who are peaceful that they are somehow linked to these terrorist attacks.
"You just don't do that in a holiday message."
In his message Friday, which marked the start of the holy month of Ramadan that evening, Trump made several references to terrorism.
"This year, the holiday begins as the world mourns the innocent victims of barbaric terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom and Egypt, acts of depravity that are directly contrary to the spirit of Ramadan," he said in one paragraph.
"Such acts only steel our resolve to defeat the terrorists and their perverted ideology."
In another, Trump referenced his comments in Saudi Arabia earlier this week.
"America will always stand with our partners against terrorism and the ideology that fuels it," he said.
"During this month of Ramadan, let us be resolved to spare no measure so that we may ensure that future generations will be free of this scourge and able to worship and commune in peace."
Most of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims will observe Ramadan, which ends on June 24.
Lieu, 48, a member of the House Judiciary Committee who is in his second term, said that Trump's message was as if he "did a 'Happy Easter' statement and then doing an entire paragraph saying that the KKK took Christianity and perverted it to do violence.
"He can talk about that in another place, but not in a holiday message."
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.