Donald Trump has told a false war story of an American general using bullets dipped in pig's blood while executing Muslims a century ago several times on the campaign trail — and knew it was false the whole time.
Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager who was
let go on Monday, told
The Washington Post Trump was aware the story wasn't true.
"It's not about that," Lewandowski told the Post during an interview before he was fired. "Look, it's an analogy."
As the story goes, Gen. John J. Pershing, who retired in 1924 as General of the Armies, was fighting Muslim insurgents in the Philippines during the Philippine-American War. A long-running rumor, which was later
proved to be false, claimed Pershing had his men use bullets coated with pig's blood to kill Muslims.
"He took 50 men and he dipped 50 bullets in pigs' blood," Trump said
during a rally this year. "And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the 50th person, he said: 'You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened.' And for 25 years, there wasn't a problem."
Last week,
Trump renewed his call to temporarily ban Muslims from the United States in the wake of the Orlando terror attack.
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