Washington: US President Donald Trump launched a fresh attack Saturday onLondon Mayor Sadiq Khan, backing a right-wing British columnist who hasbeen widely accused of Islamophobia and once called migrants “cockroaches.”
Trump attached his latest denunciation of the mayor to a retweet by KatieHopkins about crime in “Khan´s Londonistan” — using a term widelyperceived as a pejorative reference to the British capital´s Muslimpopulation and Khan´s Pakistan ancestry.
“LONDON needs a new mayor ASAP. Khan is a disaster – will only get worse!”Trump wrote in response to Hopkins´ tweet, later adding the mayor was “anational disgrace who is destroying” the city.
linkDonald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrumplinklink
He is a national disgrace who is destroying the City of London!Jessica Fletcher✔@heckyessicaReplying to @realDonaldTrump
Khan is the reason I don’t feel like visiting London anytime soon.link64.8K link4:17 AM – Jun 16, 2019linkTwitter Ads info and privacy link
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Earlier this month the president´s plane had not even touched down inLondon for the start of a state visit when he tweeted that Khan was a”stone cold loser.”
Khan had criticized the red carpet treatment being given Trump for thevisit.
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Trump said the mayor should “focus on crime in London, not me,” and made aderisive reference to Khan´s height.
Khan, London´s first Muslim mayor, had led opposition to Trump´s visit,writing a newspaper article in which he compared the US leader to Europeandictators from the 1930s and 1940s.
At that time, the mayor´s spokesman called Trump´s tweets “childish” and”beneath the president of the United States.”
On a trip to London in July last year, Trump accused Khan of doing “a verybad job on terrorism,” linking immigration to a deadly wave of crime inLondon.
The feud began when Khan, the son of a bus driver who emigrated fromPakistan in the 1960s, criticized Trump´s travel ban on people from certainMuslim countries.
Hopkins, who wrote in support of Trump´s election campaign during her timeat the Daily Mail, has been dogged by numerous allegations of Islamophobiaand hate speech during her career as a columnist.
Her description of migrants as “cockroaches” in 2015 prompted a rebuke byformer UN High Commissioner for Refugees Zeid Ra´ad Al Husein, who saidHopkins had used language similar to that employed by some Rwandan mediaoutlets in the run-up to the 1994 genocide, and by the Nazis in the 1930s.-APP/AFP
