New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday took aim at Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for using what he calls “cynical racism” as a strategic tool.
“He separates us, he divides us, very openly and for his own purposes politically,” de Blasio said on CNN’s “New Day” Monday morning. He was explaining his tweet from over the weekend that accused Trump of behaving “like a racist.”
On Monday, de Blasio cited Trump’s initial refusal to disavow the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, in addition to his comments on Muslims and Mexicans, as evidence of his claim.
“It’s a clear pattern of division and using race as a wedge and using it as a strategic tool. That’s racism,” de Blasio said. “And by the way, this is the worst kind of racism, it’s cynical racism for his own political gain.”
“In this case, he’s on the national stage, he’s a frontrunner for the Republican nomination,” de Blasio said. “His words are his actions in this case. He is literally encouraging people to feel negative things about people other than them, in fact he’s taking advantage of it politically. He’s trying to encourage people who have negative feelings toward other kinds of people to see him as their standard-bearer, and then he’s encouraging violence toward people who are different, whether it’s that they have different political beliefs, or, let’s face it, if you look at these rallies, the division in the rallies is clearly a lot of the times demographic as well.”
“We’ve seen these kinds of historical parallels before,” de Blasio added. “The xenophobia, the racism, the call to violence. This is when democracies start to break down a little bit — when someone like this emerges and they’re not stopped, they’re not countered. This is the moment when we have to stand up and say Donald Trump doesn’t represent our democracy.”
De Blasio has endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
