'So Ridiculous!'

President Donald Trump yesterday complained that he is being blamed by journalists for the massacre of 50 people in attacks on two mosques in New Zealand.

"The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand," Trump told his more than 59 million followers on Twitter.

"They will have to work very hard to prove that one," he tweeted. "So Ridiculous!"

Trump appeared to be referring to criticism of his response to the attack, which was allegedly carried out by a 28-year-old white supremacist claiming to be resisting genocide against white people.

In a lengthy written rant, the alleged killer had referred to Trump as "a symbol of renewed white identity."

Trump did on several occasions tweet and speak to condemn the "horrible" attack and offer any US assistance to New Zealand's authorities.

However, he courted controversy Friday when he played down the wider implications of the gunman's ideology, saying that violent white nationalism is not a growing problem.

"It's a small group of people," he said.

This led to a flurry of criticism from Democrats who said he was sending mixed signals when he should be more clearly standing up against what many independent experts say is the mounting problem of white nationalists targeting Muslims, Jews, immigrants and other minorities.

With controversy swirling over Trump's tepid response to the massacre, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was forced to deny any affinity between the president's anti-immigration rhetoric and the accused Christchurch shooter's extremist views.

"The president is not a white supremacist," Mulvaney said in an interview with Fox News Sunday.

But on a separate Sunday talk show, Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Detroit and one of the first two Muslim women ever elected to the US Congress, charged that the president's failure to speak out forcefully against white supremacy was making the country less safe.

"Trump is the most powerful man in the world right now," she said on CNN's "State of the Union." "He, from the Oval Office, from that power position, can be able to send a signal very loud and clear."