Trump’s latest remarks appear to go further than his speech at the U.N. by suggesting that Khan chiefly represents people who have migrated to Britain, and further that they are at ideological odds with other Britons — a view echoed in the recent U.S. National Security Strategy document, which argued that immigration is weakening Europe.
To vote for the capital’s mayor, voters must be resident in London and either be British or Irish citizens or citizens of a defined list of countries including Commonwealth nations, Denmark, Poland, Portugal and Spain who also have permission to enter or stay in the U.K.
Khan won 43.8 percent of the vote in his most recent election, compared to 32.7 percent for his Conservative rival.
A formal strategy
Trump’s virulent rhetoric echoes that in the National Security Strategy, published last Thursday, which said European countries face “civilizational erasure” due to migration policies, “censorship of free speech,” falling birth rates and “loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
During his interview with POLITICO, the U.S. president branded Europe’s political leaders “weak” and signaled that he would endorse candidates aligned with his own vision for the continent.
Asked whether some European nations would no longer be allies of the U.S., Trump replied: “It depends. They’ll change their ideology, obviously, because the people coming in have a totally different ideology … they’ll be much weaker, and they’ll be much different.”
Khan said “record numbers of Americans are flocking” to London “and I suspect it’s because we are the antithesis of everything President Trump believes in, in terms of nativism, in terms of populism, in terms of unilateralism — we’re the exact opposite.”
He added: “I’m very comfortable, as a Londoner, having friends who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh. I think diversity is a strength, not a weakness. It makes us richer, not poorer; stronger, not weaker. And it’s for President Trump to explain what he’s got against that.”