Sadiq Khan has accused Donald Trump of being a ‘poster boy for racists’ after he retweeted a post that referred to the capital city as ‘Khan’s Londonistan’.
The London mayor slammed the US president for ‘amplifying the tweets of a far-right activist’ by referencing the post by Katie Hopkins. Alongside the retweet, Mr Trump called Mr Khan a ‘disaster’ on Twitter and said he was a ‘national disgrace who is destroying the city of London’.
The original post by Hopkins using the word ‘Londonistan’ also called the capital ‘Stab-City’ and was posted in reference to the weekend’s violence that saw four people killed. The term Londonistan has been widely condemned for being a highly racialised term that was used against Mr Khan because of his Pakistani and Muslim heritage.
Speaking today, the mayor said: ‘It’s for Donald Trump to explain his tweets, not for me, but it’s remarkable that you’ve got the president of the USA amplifying the tweets of a far-right activist, amplifying a racist tweet. That’s one of my concerns about Donald Trump – he’s now seen as a poster boy for racists around the world, whether you’re a racist in this country, whether you’re a racist in Hungary, a racist in Italy, or a racist in France. He’s now a poster boy for the far-right movement and that should cause us huge concern.’
Mr Khan added: ‘It’s for Donald Trump to answer the question why he’s obsessed with me, it’s for Donald Trump to answer the question why he amplifies the tweets of far-right activists, why he amplifies racist tweets. I’m quite clear, there are many cities across this country facing a huge issue of the increase in violent crime, they’ve been doing so since 2014. There are many good leaders in America facing massive increases in violent crime, they have my support to make sure we learn lessons from each other and that we work together to grapple the issue of violent crime taking place in many cities across the Western world.’
Photo Credit: Getty
