LONDON — London mayor Sadiq Khan has hit back at Donald Trump Tuesday for suggesting he owes his election victories to the rising number of migrants in the U.K.

Speaking in an interview with POLITICO, Khan responded that the U.S. president is “obsessed” with him and contended that Americans are in fact “flocking” to live in London, because its liberal values are the “antithesis” of Trump’s.

London’s mayor urged Trump to clarify his remarks that people who “come in” to Britain helped put Khan in office. “I think it’s for President Trump to explain what he means by that,” Khan said. “I’m unclear.” 

The U.S. president, who spoke on Monday at the White House to POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for a special episode of The Conversation, asserted that European nations are “decaying” and their immigration policies would render them no longer “viable.”

POLITICO on Tuesday named Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

In his Europe-bashing comments to POLITICO, Trump zeroed in on London and Paris, claiming they were each a “different place” to what they once were, and launched an especially incendiary attack on Khan, saying: “If you take a look at London, you have a mayor named Khan.  

“He’s a horrible mayor,” Trump went on. “He’s an incompetent mayor, but he’s a horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor. I think he’s done a terrible job. London’s a different place.” 

Trump added: “My roots are in Europe, as you know … and I hate to see that happen. This is one of the great places in the world, and they’re allowing people just to come in and … unchecked, unvetted.” 

Trump argued immigration would change the “ideology” of European nations, saying of Khan: “He’s a disaster. He’s got a totally different ideology of what he’s supposed to have. And he gets elected because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.” 

Khan responded: “I think the one part that President Trump has got right is that London is becoming a different place. We are the greatest city in the world.  

“I suspect that’s one of the reasons why we have record numbers of Americans coming here to holiday, coming here to live, coming here to invest, or coming here to study. 

“I literally have no idea why President Trump is so obsessed with this mayor of London. I’m not sure what he’s got against a liberal, progressive, diverse, successful city like London.”

A history of public attacks

Trump and Khan — who topped the same influence list himself in 2017 — have traded barbs regularly since the center-left Labour politician won office in 2016, becoming the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital. 

Born in London to parents who moved to Britain from Pakistan in the 1960s, Khan, 55, attended school and studied law in the U.K. capital, and served as a transport minister in Gordon Brown’s Labour government. 

The U.S. president most recently attacked Khan during his United Nations speech in September, alleging without evidence that London wants “to go to Sharia law” under Khan. London’s mayor responded at the time by saying Trump had “shown he is racist, he is sexist, he is misogynistic and he is Islamophobic.” 

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.”