Fox News’ Swedish ‘security adviser’ has many puzzled

Associated Press

NEW YORK

A wave of puzzlement is rippling across Sweden for the second time in a week, after a prominent Fox News program featured a “Swedish defense and national security adviser” who’s unknown to the country’s military and foreign-affairs officials.

Swedes, and some Americans, have been wondering about representations of the Nordic nation in the U.S. since President Donald Trump invoked “what’s happening last night in Sweden” while alluding to past terror attacks during a rally Feb. 18. There hadn’t been any major incident in Sweden the previous night.

Then, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly convened an on-air faceoff over Swedish immigration and crime between a Swedish newspaper reporter and a man identified on screen and verbally as a “Swedish defense and national security adviser,” Nils Bildt.

Bildt linked immigration to crime and social problems in Sweden, lamented what he described as Swedish liberal close-mindedness about the downsides of welcoming newcomers and said: “We are unable in Sweden to socially integrate these people.”

But if viewers might have taken the “adviser” for a government insider, the Swedish Defense Ministry and Foreign Office told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter they knew nothing of him. Calls to Swedish officials Saturday weren’t immediately returned.

Bildt is a founding member of a corporate geopolitical strategy and security consulting business with offices in Washington, Brussels and Tokyo, according its website.