Donald Trump’s virulent comments are playing right into the “game plan” of ISIS and other terrorist groups, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday.
“It’s time to say that in fact, what Donald Trump is doing, in one way or another, is doing the bidding of our enemies. Because our enemies, in particular ISIS, want to see the American people divided for example against the Muslim-American community,” de Blasio told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on “New Day.” “That’s the ISIS game plan. And what Trump is saying is falling right into that game plan.”
The New York mayor also said Trump’s comments last week before the Republican Jewish Coalition, that he was a “negotiator like you” invoked an “age-old, horrible stereotype” and said that no American should ever be “put on a list” because of their religion — a reference to Trump’s support for creating a registry of Muslim Americans.
The Anti-Defamation League, a watchdog group that monitors anti-Semitism, defended Trump’s comments at the RJC last week, saying “context is everything.”
De Blasio continued, “What he’s saying is corrosive to our democratic values. It’s dangerous. And I’ll call him out and I think more and more people are saying you know what it used to be to some people entertaining, it’s not entertaining anymore, it’s dangerous.”
Trump and de Blasio have been going back and forth for almost a month. Trump tweeted on Nov. 20 “Can you believe the worst Mayor in the U.S., & probably the worst Mayor in the history of #NYC, @BilldeBlasio, just called me a blow hard!”
