Trump Posts Sweden in Flames - "Wake Up America!"

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has posted a cartoon showing Sweden, Norway, England and France as doors engulfed in flames and smoke. At the last door, the American one, a bearded man with a burning torch is knocking.

The doormat reads "Islam". Above it all: "Wake up America!"

The image went up on Trump's own platform, Truth Social, on Saturday evening at 8:33 p.m. Swedish time. He added no comment of his own.

In the drawing the doors stand in a row along a wrecked corridor. Black smoke pours out from behind the doors marked Norway and England, while the doors for Sweden and France are still burning.

Furthest away stands the American door, decorated with the Stars and Stripes and still intact. The grinning man in front of it wears a long Salafist-style beard, a white cap and a long robe.

The post came just days before Tuesday's U.S. midterm elections. By Monday evening it had drawn more than 7,000 likes and close to 3,000 shares.

"Among the worst I have seen"

Jan Hallenberg, a U.S. expert affiliated with the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, rejects the president's picture of Europe.

"This is among the worst I have seen, from him at least," Hallenberg told the Swedish tabloid Expressen.

He links the image to the Senate race in Michigan, where Trump has called the Democratic candidate a jihadist. According to Hallenberg, Trump wants to stop him by playing on fear of Islam.

"That is not how you behave in a democracy," he said.

Hallenberg also suggested Norway was included because Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize, a decision he believes the president took personally.

For many Swedes, though, the cartoon will look less like an insult than a familiar picture. The Quran riots and the 2017 truck terror attack in central Stockholm are among the events that have already reshaped how the world sees Sweden.