TRUMP on the transformation of Europe:

“There is something going on, Maria,” he said. “Go to Brussels. Go to Paris. Go to different places. There is something going on and it’s not good, where they want Shariah law, where they want this, where they want things that — you know, there has to be some assimilation. There is no assimilation. There is something bad going on.”

Warming to his theme, he added that Brussels was in a particularly dire state. “You go to Brussels — I was in Brussels a long time ago, 20 years ago, so beautiful, everything is so beautiful — it’s like living in a hellhole right now,” Mr. Trump continued.

For Belgians, already reeling from recent terrorist plots and a chronically dysfunctional government, Mr. Trump’s words were enough to induce a fit of pique . . .

Belgium has come under scrutiny for failing to tame growing radicalization. Éric Zemmour, a French writer, recently suggested in an interview that rather than bombing the Islamic State’s self-declared capital of Raqqa, Syria, France should bomb Molenbeek, the working-class district in Brussels where several of the Paris attackers lived.

Here’s an article from a few days ago: Molenbeek: Terror recruiting ground.

Belgium provides more foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria, per capita, than any other European nation, and authorities estimate that 130 of these battle-trained extremists have returned home. . . .

The mayor’s office told us there are about 800 suspected jihadists in Belgium, 450 in Brussels, and 85 in Molenbeek. Brussels has a population of just over 1 million people, but it has six different police departments and 19 districts. The federal government has authority over counter-terrorism, but relies on local departments to provide on-the-ground intelligence and surveillance. It’s a jurisdictional nightmare.