Pope Francis blames 'fake news' for Trump assassination attempt in annual papal address

Pope Francis recently said that "fake news" was the root cause of the assassination attempts against President-elect Donald Trump last year.

"This phenomenon generates false images of reality, a climate of suspicion that foments hate, undermines people's sense of security, and compromises civil coexistence and the stability of entire nations. Tragic examples of this are the attacks on the chairman of the government of the Slovak Republic and the president-elect of the United States of America," he said.

Trump narrowly avoided being killed at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last July, when would-be assassin Thomas Crooks fired at him with an AR-15 rifle.  Crooks' round missed Trump's skull by less than an inch, though it hit him in the ear. Other rounds entered the crowd behind the then-GOP candidate, wounding two and killing rallygoer Corey Comperatore.

"We see increasingly polarized societies marked by a general sense of fear and distrust of others and of the future, which is aggravated by the continuous creation and spread of 'fake news,'" Francis declared, using the term that Trump made popular at the start of his political career.

The Pope added that fake news "not only distorts facts but also perceptions."

Following the attempts on his life, Trump blamed false rhetoric pushed by the left as what inspired the shootings against him. 

"My prayerful hope for this new year is that the jubilee may represent for everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike, an opportunity also to rethink the relationships that bind us to one another, as human beings and political communities," he expressed.