The real reason Trump mocks Sadiq Khan… and it’s not racism

The Mayor of London claims that Donald Trump criticises him because he’s a Muslim. There’s just one small problem

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We all know that Sadiq Khan is a man of many remarkable talents. Until now, however, I hadn’t realised that he was telepathic. Yet evidently he is. Because, by using this extraordinary gift, he’s been able to establish the real reason why Donald Trump has always been so critical of his record as Mayor of London.
It’s purely because Mr Khan is a Muslim.
“If I wasn’t this colour skin, if I wasn’t a practising Muslim, he wouldn’t have come for me,” the Mayor declared on a podcast released this week. “He’s coming for me for – let’s be frank – my ethnicity and my religion.”
I for one am grateful to Mr Khan for this explanation. But also intrigued by it. Because, to my knowledge at least, Trump has never actually mentioned Mr Khan’s ethnicity or religion. I know that, in the past, he’s accused Mr Khan of doing “a terrible job”, “a very bad job on crime” and “a very bad job on terrorism”. And I know that he’s called Mr Khan “very dumb”, “pathetic”, “incompetent”, “a disaster”, “a national disgrace who is destroying the City of London”, “a terrible mayor who should stay out of our business” and a “stone-cold loser who should focus on crime in London”. But I don’t remember him ever attacking Mr Khan for being a Muslim. Thank goodness, then, for the Mayor’s powers of telepathy, otherwise we would never have known.
Then again, I suppose there is an alternative possibility here. Which is that Trump isn’t being Islamophobic, and Mr Khan is simply talking a load of whiny, self-pitying rubbish.
To be fair, you can see why he might do so. After all, if someone says you’re doing “a terrible job”, you don’t want to think that it’s because you actually are doing a terrible job. That would be awfully upsetting. Far preferable to tell yourself, and indeed everyone else, that the person is only saying it because he or she hates your race or religion.
By claiming that this is Trump’s motivation, however, Mr Khan is overlooking a screamingly obvious fact. Which is that Trump talks in exactly the same way about everyone who opposes him. Since entering politics he’s fired similarly splenetic personal abuse at Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Tim Walz, Nancy Pelosi, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel… All of whom happen to be white and Christian. Which shows that he’s equally horrible about all his critics and foes, regardless of their creed or colour.
In a sense, therefore, Trump is a true egalitarian.
In Howl, his immortal poem of 1956, Allen Ginsberg lamented: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” If he were still around today, he could comfortably replace that final word with “Twitter”. Then again, it probably wouldn’t occur to him. Because his own mind would have been destroyed by Twitter, too.
The sad truth is that, over the past decade and more, a dangerously unhealthy addiction to Twitter has driven millions of middle-class liberals stark staring bonkers. Spending their every waking moment on that miserable platform has radicalised these otherwise intelligent people into swallowing the most extreme, irrational, and downright silly ideas. Women have penises. Brexit was caused by Russian bots. Shamima Begum is a blameless victim. The Tories are privatising the NHS. Voicing even the mildest concern about open-borders immigration is indistinguishable from Nazism…
Given that middle-class liberals are invariably highly educated, how have they become susceptible to so much nakedly delusional nonsense? How can so many academics, authors and white-collar professionals have become so crazed, and so gullible?
I suspect the answer is that, psychologically speaking, an awful lot of them have never left secondary school. Inside, they’re still the hopelessly insecure teenage geeks and dweebs who were desperate to sit at the cool kids’ table. And today, they believe that the way to secure this prized invitation is to parrot the cool kids’ opinions. Which, in the world of Twitter, are always rabidly Left-wing.
Mercifully, however, there is now hope of recovery. Because, if the Guardian’s flounce over Elon Musk inspires all these middle-class liberals to follow suit and quit Twitter, perhaps they can finally be deradicalised, return to sanity, and actually become the sensible, reasonable, moderate “grown-ups” they imagine themselves to be.
The only risk is that, rather than renounce social media altogether, they’ll all just flock to the midwit pity party that is Bluesky – and, in the absence of anyone to the Right of Rory Stewart, grow even more foamingly deranged than they are now.
For a homeowner, there are few experiences more distressing than being burgled. But what makes it even more distressing these days is that, all too often, the police show little interest in investigating. In some parts of the country, you’re lucky if they bother turning up at all.
Thankfully, though, you can now ensure their attendance by following my simple tip. Next time you find you’ve been burgled, immediately call 999, and report that there’s a middle-aged woman in your house expressing conservative views.
The police will rush straight round.
Way of the World is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday
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