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London Mayor Sadiq Khan says Trump’s attacks on him are due to his ethnicity and religion
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has accused Donald Trump of repeatedly criticizing him because of his “ethnicity” and Muslim faith, comments likely to renew his long-running feud with the US president-elect.
The pair became embroiled in an extraordinary war of words during Trump’s first presidency, initially sparked by Khan speaking out against a U.S. travel ban on people from certain Muslim countries.
Trump then accused Khan — the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when he was first elected in 2016 — of doing a “very bad job on terrorism” and called him a “stone cold loser” and “very dumb.”
The mayor in turn allowed an unflattering blimp of Trump dressed as a baby in a diaper to fly above protests in Parliament Square during his 2018 visit to Britain.
Speaking on a podcast recorded before Trump’s re-election on November 5 and released earlier this week, Khan, a son of Pakistani immigrants to Britain, said he viewed the past targeting of him as “incredibly personal.”
“If I wasn’t this color skin, if I wasn’t a practicing Muslim, he wouldn’t have come for me,” he told the High Performance podcast, which interviews prominent people in different sectors.
“He’s come for me because of, let’s be frank, my ethnicity and my religion.”
Khan added that during this period he was “speaking out against somebody whose policies were sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist” and that he has “a responsibility to speak out.”
His latest comments on Trump are in stark contrast to those of his colleagues in Britain’s Labour party, which swept to power in July.
Several Labour members of Parliament now in senior government posts, including Foreign Secretary David Lammy, were critical of Trump while they were in opposition during his first White House term.
In 2018, Lammy labeled him a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath.” But Britain’s now-top diplomat last week dismissed the remarks as “old news.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has appeared at pains to forge a positive relationship with the president-elect, promptly congratulating him on his “historic election victory.”
Starmer said their phone call was “very positive, very constructive” and the so-called special relationship between the U.K. and U.S. would “prosper” in Trump’s second term.
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Dramatic video shows Phoenix police smash sunroof, saving man from car submerged in pool
Phoenix police on Tuesday released dramatic video of an officer rescuing a man who they say drove his car into a pool.
The video shows the car was fully submerged in the water when the officer arrived after bystanders had called 911 to report someone had driven into the pool. The officer removed some of his gear and got into the pool, where he climbed onto the top of the car, smashed the sunroof and pulled out the unidentified driver, who was wearing a yellow safety vest.
“I got you, I got you, got you,” the officer can be heard saying on body camera video. “Anybody else in there?”
The rescued man was the only person in the car. He told police he’d ended up in the pool after he accidentally stepped on the gas too hard. The man was taken to a hospital after the rescue.
“Thanks to the swift and courageous response of the officer, the man’s life was saved,” police said in a Facebook post.
The incident happened at an apartment complex swimming pool early on Oct. 31, according to CBS News affiliate KPHO.