London Mayor Sadiq Khan has accused Donald Trump of repeatedly criticizing him for his “ethnicity” and his Muslim faith. These comments are likely to reignite his long-running feud with the newly elected US president.
The pair became embroiled in an extraordinary war of words during Trump’s first presidency, initially sparked by Khan speaking out against a US travel ban on people from certain Muslim countries.
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Trump then accused Khan – the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when he was first elected in 2016 – of “a very poor job on terrorism,” calling him a “stone-cold loser” and “very stupid.”
The mayor, in turn, flew an unflattering Trump blimp dressed as a baby in a diaper over protests in Parliament Square during his 2018 visit to Britain.
Richard Baker / In photos via Getty Images
In a podcast recorded before Trump’s re-election on November 5 and released earlier this week, Khan, a son of Pakistani immigrants in Britain, said he saw the previous attacks on him as “incredibly personal.”
“If I didn’t have this skin color, if I wasn’t a practicing Muslim, he wouldn’t have come for me,” he told the High Performance podcast, which interviews prominent people from different sectors.
“He’s coming for me because of, let’s face it, my ethnicity and my religion.”
Khan added that during this period he “spoke out against someone whose policies were sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic and racist” and that he “has a responsibility to speak out.”
His latest comments about Trump are in stark contrast to those of his colleagues in the British Labor Party came to power in July.
Several Labor MPs who now hold senior government posts, including Foreign Secretary David Lammy, were critical of Trump while in opposition during his first term in the White House.
In 2018, Lammy branded him a “misogynistic, neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath.” But Britain’s top diplomat dismissed the comments last week as “old news.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has gone out of his way to build a positive relationship with the newly elected president, promptly congratulating him on his ‘historic election victory’.
Starmer said their call was “very positive, very constructive” and that the so-called special relationship between Britain and the US would “proceed smoothly” during Trump’s second term.
