Donald Trump blamed terrorism for the EgyptAir Flight 804 crash in a tweet posted early Thursday morning, even though authorities are still investigating the cause of the crash.
“Looks like yet another terrorist attack. Airplane departed from Paris. When will we get tough, smart and vigilant? Great hate and sickness!” the presumptive GOP nominee tweeted at about 6:30 a.m. ET.
It was approximately two hours after Trump’s tweet was posted that the Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said they were not ruling out any possibilities yet.
“We do not deny there is a possibility of terrorism or deny the possibility of technical fault,” Fathy said. “I will continue to use the term ‘missing plane’ until we find any debris.”
The cause behind the disappearance of EgyptAir 804 is more likely to be terrorism than a technical issue, Egypt’s Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said at a Cairo press conference Thursday.
“I don’t want to go to speculation. I don’t want to go to assumptions like others. But if you analyze this situation properly, the possibility of having a different action aboard, of having a terror attack, is higher than having a technical problem,” he said.
Speaking early Thursday evening at a fundraiser for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Trump said, “What just happened 12 hours ago? A plane got blown out of the sky. And if anyone doesn’t think it was blown out of the sky, you’re 100% wrong.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has referred to something as terrorism before officials determine the cause.
Before the San Bernardino shootings were classified as an act of terror, Trump said that he thought it was terrorism, according to ABC News.
“Take a look. I mean, you look at the names, you look at what happened. You tell me,” Trump said.
The real-estate mogul turned politician has come out with hardline proposals to combat terrorism, including arguing in favor of certain torture techniques.